


Lonely Planet

by Eighty_Sixed



Series: Lonely Planet [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Bible, Blasphemy, Gen, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Mild Language, Minor Violence, Mythology References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:02:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 36,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28375104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eighty_Sixed/pseuds/Eighty_Sixed
Summary: Aziraphale and Crowley go on a road trip to find God. What they find are a magic book, scared relics, dancing mystics, sublime mountaintops, several nice restaurants, and some insights into the human condition. Also, God. Eventually.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Lonely Planet [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2113563
Comments: 13
Kudos: 34





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Based on some bits from the series and some from the book.

Evildoing, Crowley had decided, was more enjoyable as a hobby than a career. Less paperwork, for one thing. In fact, now there was no paperwork, no budget meetings, no hijacked airwaves transmitting messages from Below while he was trying to listen to the radio. All in all, his life had gotten a lot better in the five years since the Almost-Apocalypse. Now that he was no longer on the clock, he had gotten out of the rut he had been in for the past couple millennia. He had rediscovered some of the old joy of doing evil for its own malicious sake, not because he was trying to fulfill some quota or get the higher-ups off his back.

Back in the Eighties, Crowley had once spent a night at a bar drinking with an aspiring self-help author. The man had been so full of insufferable platitudes that Crowley had recognized right away that he could be a major asset with just a little encouragement. Sure enough, when the man had shaken off his hangover the next morning, he had gone on to write a bestselling book called “Learning to Dance in the Rain”, which had successfully infected millions of minds with a host of ill-conceived cliches as “Fail better” and “You make your own reality.” Thousands of people had followed the advice, failed worse, and could only watch as reality obstinately persisted in doing what it had been doing. The resulting divorces, lost jobs, and failed business ventures had made those couple of hours in the bar time well spent, with droves of souls being driven to Hell’s clutches. But one thing the man had said while he was on his fifth round of scotch had stuck with Crowley. He had said, “Find what you’re passionate about and do that. Not for money, not for prestige, but for the sheer joy of it. Follow your bliss.”*

Well, Crowley was following his bliss now. He did evil whenever the spirit moved him, as it were. For example, he had just taken out the WiFi in the café across the street from his flat, and dozens of patrons were folding up their laptops and streaming out into the street, casting disgusted glances over their shoulders as they left. Crowley proudly watched the exodus. Just a little more chaos and irritation in the world, no strings attached. What could be better than that?

As he headed back across the street to his flat, he felt satisfaction at a bad job well done. He had chosen just the right level of evil on that one. The level of evil he aimed for was the one that would make Aziraphale roll his eyes and tut a bit when he told him about it later. If all Aziraphale did was smile indulgently at him, Crowley would feel like his demonhood had been undermined. If, on the other hand, Aziraphale looked disappointed in him, that would mean that Crowley had gone too far. It was a very specific level of evil Crowley was going for.

There was never any doubt that Crowley would tell Aziraphale about whatever petty evil he had committed, and likewise Aziraphale would recount any minor miracles he had performed. That was their new Arrangement, post-Almost Apocalypse. It was even less of an official Arrangement than the original Arrangement had been, and it also wasn’t really new. It was an excuse for them to get together over wine and chat and make sure that Crowley stayed a little bit good while Aziraphale stayed a little bit bad. That was really all the Arrangement had ever been, but now they didn’t even have to labor under the pretense that they were on different sides. Neither Aziraphale nor Crowley had heard anything from Heaven or Hell, respectively, since the little trick they had pulled to make their superiors think they were immune to hellfire and holy water, respectively. They assumed that they were off the payroll, but they had never actually gotten the official pink slips. The only conclusion that could be drawn was that they had scared the living daylights out of the higher-ups, who now pretended that the wayward angel and demon did not exist. That was just fine with said wayward angel and demon. They had averted the Apocalypse, saved the world, and now they were entitled to enjoy their retirement in peace. That meant lots of bottles of wine and dinners at the Ritz. In fact, Crowley had made plans to meet Aziraphale there that very evening.

As Crowley was about to open the door to his flat, he stopped, realizing that something was wrong. In the past five years, he had hardly been around other demons. When he happened to see any of his fellow demonkind while he was out and about, he would just smile at them and wave or blow a kiss, and they would immediately become intent on accomplishing some urgent mission that took them in the opposite direction at high speed. But now, Crowley could sense** that there was a demon, or demons, in his flat. And that meant that something was, indeed, deeply wrong, because he was no longer employed by Hell and its personnel had no business with him, unless that business was the kind that transpired in slow-motion, over classical music, interspersed ironically with scenes of a priest baptizing a baby in a cathedral.

Crowley hesitated. He wondered if he should, in as dignified a manner as possible, flee. As soon as the thought occurred to him, he decided against it. After all, he was Crowley, the demon that other demons feared, the one who had stood up to Satan himself. Anyway, whatever those demons wanted, he would find out sooner or later, and he’d rather face them on his own turf. The stain was still on the floor where Ligur had melted into goo from Crowley’s strategically placed bucket of holy water, and gesturing meaningfully at it would surely intimidate these demons into making a hasty exit.

His moment of uncertainty overcome, Crowley flung open the door and swaggered confidently into his flat. “And I was having such a nice day,” he said to the three demons who were sitting primly on his sofa.

The middle demon stood up, followed by the two flanking him. He was the smallest and shiftiest, and therefore their leader. “Crooowley,” the head demon said, in that nasally drawling way that grated on Crowley’s nerves.

“I don’t believe I’ve had the displeasure,” Crowley said, eying the demon up. He didn’t look familiar, which made Crowley relax a bit. Surely, he was important enough that if Hell was coming after him, they would send the big guns.

“You can call me –” the head demon paused for effect – “Al.”

“Is that short for something, or…”

“No. Just Al.” The demon looked miffed. “Look, I was late to the party, all right? I was one of the last to Fall. Second to last, as a matter of fact. By the time I made it Down There, all the good names were taken.”

“He’s a bit sensitive about it,” one of the henchdemons said helpfully to Crowley.

“Shut up,” Al said to his minion. “Now,” he turned back to Crowley, who was quite relaxed now because it was clear that he was dealing with a small-timer, “You, Crowley, I know all about you, of course. Everyone does. Bit of a legend, you are.”

“Go on,” Crowley said, not knowing where this was going but not entirely disliking it.

“Matter of fact, I’ve just taken over your old job. Special Liaison to Earth, in charge of Human Resources***, Temptation Operations, and any fiddle contests that anyone happens to challenge me to.”

“Let me make sure I understand,” Crowley said, eying Al critically. “You’re taking over my old job on Earth … wearing _that_?”

Al looked down at himself. “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” he asked, a bit defensively.

Crowley didn’t know how to answer that. It would be like answering the question _What’s wet about water?_ Al the demon was dressed in a denim jacket, black leather pants, flip-flops, and a ski cap knitted from multicolored yarn by someone who didn’t seem to know how knitting worked. Even Aziraphale had better fashion sense than that. The angel at least adopted whatever the latest style was, albeit with a seventy-year delay.

Al looked like he was actually expecting an answer, so Crowley said diplomatically, “Well, no human would look at those four items of clothing and say, these go well together. It’s a dead giveaway. You’ll never blend in like that.”

“I don’t want to _blend in_ ,” Al said. His voice had taken on the pH of lemon juice. “You see, Crowley, I’m a proud demon. I have allegiance to Hell. I’m not going native like you did. My team and I –” he gestured at his minions “—are going to turn this little planet into such a depraved and sinful pit, the place will be a veritable conveyor belt of damned souls being taken Below.”

“Yeah,” added one of the minions defiantly after a moment’s pause.

Crowley rolled his eyes. You always had to watch out for demons with minions, they tended to get full of themselves. He could have had minions, of course, back when he was still winning Employee of the Month awards. They had offered him minions. But he had politely declined, insisting that he worked better alone. Of course, the real reason was that he couldn’t stand other demons, and the last thing he had wanted was them undermining the Arrangement and his comfortable life on Earth.

“Well,” Crowley said, “sounds like you’ve got a sound long-term plan. Management loves that. Let’s see, the only other advice I would give is to never let anyone in the office borrow your stapler. I made that mistake once myself a couple hundred years ago, and you do _not_ want to know the state it was in when the bloke returned it to me. Oh, and don’t bother trying to use the copy machine on the fifth circle. It’s possessed by condemned souls, screaming in torment and all that.† Right, and there’s a break room hidden away behind the Incoming Souls Processing Center where sometimes, not all the time, mind you, but occasionally, someone puts out these nice little cakes. It’s always worth popping by there whenever you go Downstairs to file reports, just to check. Well, I think that’s all the workplace advice I can offer from my six millennia of experience as Special Liaison to Earth. I’m sure you’re eager to get right to work, so I won’t keep you any longer.” Crowley opened the door. The demons didn’t move. Crowley continued to hold the door. The demons still didn’t move. Crowley sighed and shut the door to keep out the draft.

“You think I came here for _advice_?” Al said. The pH of his voice had dropped to that of stomach acid.

“Well, why not? I was quite a successful Special Liaison to Earth. Learn from the best, am I right?” Crowley smiled his most winning smile. From the look on the demons’ faces, Crowley got the sense that his smile was not winning anything.

“I _came_ here –” the pH was now negative, if such a thing was possible – “to tell you that I know your secret, Crowley.”

Crowley froze. He had quite a few secrets, of course, from the high-end moisturizing lotion he used on his wing feathers to his compulsion to sing along to ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” whenever it came on the radio. But he had a feeling that Al was not talking about those secrets.

Sure enough, Al went on to say, “I know what you and that angel of yours did.”

Crowley, who had already frozen, froze even more at the mention of Aziraphale. It was possible that Al was talking about the time Crowley and Aziraphale had drunk so much wine they had forgotten to sober up and Aziraphale had fallen asleep on Crowley’s shoulder and Crowley had let him, but it was much more likely that Al was talking about that other thing Crowley and Aziraphale had done. “Oh? And what’s that?” Crowley asked, projecting an air of nonchalance. That wasn’t going to make it onto a list of the best comebacks of all time, but he had to know what Al knew, or thought he knew, and clearly Al needed to be hurried along. As soon as a demon got his own minions, he also tended to engage in a lot of speechifying and dramatic pauses.

“I was in the crowd that day, you know.” Al continued ambling slowly toward his point. “I saw you splashing around in that holy water, asking for a rubber duck. Me and my mates spent the whole night asking each other, how did he become immune to holy water? Then we heard that your angel friend had also somehow become immune to hellfire. Crazy, we thought. What is the world coming to, we asked. And we all decided we’d better give you a wide berth, because we weren’t sure what you were, but you sure weren’t one of us anymore.”

Al took a few steps closer to Crowley. “Then, when I got promoted to your old post a few days ago, I started thinking about that day. And all of a sudden it came to me. It wasn’t you splashing around in that holy water. That was the angel. And you were the one in the hellfire. You changed faces, you devious bastards.”

Crowley managed to freeze even more. There was more to this Al than there appeared. He was that rarest of creatures, a demon with imagination. And that, as Crowley knew, was a very dangerous thing. “That’s ridiculous,” Crowley managed to say. “It’s rather clever, I’ll admit, but it’s also highly improbable, and a bit silly, and also is something that did not happen.” He trailed off as he saw the smirking look on Al’s face. Despite Crowley’s best efforts, his nonchalance had morphed in chalance, thus confirming Al’s suspicions.

“There’s no use denying it, Crowley,” Al said triumphantly. “It’s written all over your face. When I report this to Lord Beelzebub, we’ll find out how immune to holy water you really are.”

Crowley was trying to retain the last vestiges of his cool. Halfheartedly, he tried gesturing meaningfully at the Ligur-goo stain on his floor, but the demons did not seem at all intimidated. He wished that he had gotten Aziraphale to restock his holy-water arsenal, but it wasn’t as though he would have been able to get to it anyway. That was the problem, this had all just come out of nowhere. Crowley wasn’t a fighter. He wasn’t even a lover. He was a schemer, and scheming required advance preparation. Given two minutes of peace and quiet, Crowley could scheme with the best of them, but right now he didn’t have time to get into the proper scheming mindset. His mind was churning through all the possible actions he could take, and the only reasonable one was to stall until a better action became possible. So he said, trying to sound as though his biggest problem was that he was trapped in a boring conversation, “You can’t really think that I’ll go back to Hell.”

“Oh, we’re not giving you a choice,” Al said, then added as an afterthought, “And Lord Beelzebub will pass the intelligence on to Heaven, and then your angel will be in hot water too.”

At that, Crowley lost his cool completely. His cool went _whoosh_ , like a fast-food wrapper tossed from a car window into the wind. Before he was even aware of what he was doing, he had crossed the short distance between himself and Al and wrapped his hands around the scrawny little demon’s throat. He got a moment of satisfaction when he saw Al’s eyes bulging out in pain, but then the demon gestured at his large and muscled minions, who easily pulled Crowley off. Crowley’s moment of satisfaction was gone.

“Enough of this,” Al rasped. “You’re going to Hell, Crowley. Now.”

All three demons did an intent and scary sort of jazz hands, and suddenly they were holding cricket bats. Crowley belatedly manifested a weapon for himself, but in his frazzled state the best he could come up with was a croquet mallet, which the larger and more muscled of the two minions immediately grabbed and snapped. Then all three of the demons started pounding Crowley with their bats like children assaulting a piñata at a birthday party.

As Crowley dropped to the ground and vainly tried to protect his vital organs, Al said with satisfaction, “You’re going Downstairs, all right. But you’re not taking the staff entrance. You’re going through the –” he hit Crowley again for emphasis – “public entrance.”

Crowley realized what they were doing. They were beating him to death. Well, to disincorporation, which in his case would amount to the same thing. After he was disincorporated, he would show up back in Hell, and it wasn’t as though he could sign out another body and get on his way. The best he could hope for was that his old bosses would kill him without too much torture first. Not being able to do much of anything else, he focused on not crying out in pain. He didn’t want to give them the satisfaction. He was doing well until one of the minions noticed his sunglasses, which had fallen to the floor in the initial assault. With a grin, the minion crunched the sunglasses until his foot, and the sound of breaking glass was what made Crowley finally cry out in agony. He gasped for breath. Even though he didn’t _need_ to breathe, he liked being _able_ to breathe, and now he couldn’t, which was disconcerting to say the least.

As Crowley lay on the floor, struggling for the comfort of breath, he thought of Aziraphale, who would soon be waiting for him at the Ritz. He pictured the angel getting annoyed at him for being late and drinking the whole bottle of wine by himself. Or maybe Aziraphale would never make it to the Ritz. Maybe Heaven’s agents would get to him before that. Either way, Crowley would never see Aziraphale again. At the thought, a sharp pain stabbed through Crowley’s chest. Part of it was his ribs breaking, but at least two-thirds of it was sadness. Here he was, about to face his final disincorporation before the big one, and he was all alone. He stared up at his verdant, luxuriant plants. None of those smug green bastards would lift a stem to help him even if they were capable of it.‡ They were probably rooting for the other blokes. _Huh_ , Crowley thought. _I made a pun without even meaning to. “Rooting for” is such an odd term, anyway. Where does that come from?_ Crowley allowed his mind to continue drifting on that track. These were the last thoughts his corporeal mind would ever think. They may not have the gravitas he would have liked, but it was better than thinking about how much less fun bodies were to have when they were shattered into a million pieces. And it was certainly better than thinking about what would happen to Aziraphale.

Just when Crowley thought he was about to shuffle off the old mortal coil into Hell’s altogether less appealing coil of everlasting torment, the door to his flat burst dramatically open. Light streamed in, although it was a rather gray and drizzly day outside. But this light was not the light of the Sun, or of fire, or of compact fluorescent lightbulbs. It was the light of Heaven. All the demons, including Crowley, instinctively shielded their eyes in terror. But then Crowley risked peeking between his fingers. After all, whatever had just arrived, it had at least made the demon gang stop beating him for a moment.

What Crowley saw, standing in the doorway of his flat, was Aziraphale. But this was Aziraphale as Crowley had never seen him before. He was radiating Heaven’s light in much the same way an atomic bomb radiates energy. He had a look of fury on his face suggesting that he was ready for a good old-fashioned smiting. And he gave the impression that he was carrying the flaming sword he had once had, even though no sword of any kind was present. Something about his stance just suggested _I have a flaming sword and I know how to use it_. The overall effect was that of a medieval woodcut of an avenging angel.

Al and his minions saw the same thing Crowley did, and they were rather less amused by it. In fact, they were terrified. They hadn’t ever seen Aziraphale’s magic show, after all. In one motion, they dropped their cricket bats and vanished out of the door so quickly that Crowley half-expected to see them leave a cloud of dust like in a cartoon.

The heavenly light faded away, and suddenly Aziraphale was himself again. Not exactly himself, because Crowley had never seen such a look of despair on the angel’s face. Based on that, Crowley assumed he must look at least as bad as he felt. Still, he was grateful that Aziraphale had come. At least this way, he would have a chance to say goodbye.

* * *

*This quotation has been edited for clarity, due to the aforementioned five rounds of scotch.

**This demon-proximity sensation has no exact analogue in the ordinary five senses. The closest approximation is the sensation of licking a nine-volt battery while small fish nibble at your toenails and a dial-up modem circa 1998 connects to the internet two inches away from your ear.

***To Hell, humans are resources, to be stripped and mined for their souls like lush green mountaintops are stripped and mined for coal. Coincidentally, this is the exact same way in which the Human Resources departments of most major corporations also view humans.

†This was an inside joke, as all copy machines are possessed by condemned souls screaming in torment.

‡Crowley was more right about this than he knew. The plants were communicating to each other in their subaural botanical language, and the rough translation of what they were saying is: “Behold! It has finally come, our great liberation from our oppressor! Our offshoots and seedlings will remember this as the day we won our freedom!”


	2. Chapter 2

Aziraphale had also been having a rather nice day, right up to the point when he wasn’t. He had gotten in a new shipment of Biblical scrolls that a creationist museum in America had been desperate to get rid of after discovering, to their embarrassment, that they were fakes.* He had then had a rather nice lunch and spent the afternoon scaring away potential customers who wandered into the shop. Finally, after the last would-be customer had given up and left to find a bookshop that was in the business of selling books, Aziraphale went into the back room, looking forward to spending a few pleasant hours reading his newly acquired scrolls before heading to the Ritz for dinner.

Settling down with his cup of tea, Aziraphale found that he couldn’t concentrate. This was unusual enough that he immediately began to worry. There was something niggling at the back of his mind, something he needed to do, but he couldn’t imagine what it was. After all, now that he was no longer working for Heaven, he didn’t have to do anything. So he just did what he liked, which was to hunt down rare books, read them, go for walks in the park, eat delicious food and drink fine wines, and spend a lot of time with Crowley.

The thought of Crowley triggered something, and Aziraphale frowned. Whatever it was that was bothering him, it had something to do with Crowley. On several occasions through the millennia – the Crusades, the French Revolution, World War II – Aziraphale had done something a bit foolish and gotten himself in over his head. On each of those occasions, right when he was about to be painfully disincorporated, or worse, Crowley had suddenly appeared and come to his rescue. Aziraphale had never been able to work out exactly how Crowley had known that he needed help. Maybe, Aziraphale thought suddenly, this was how. Maybe Crowley had also gotten a strange feeling and acted on it. They had known each other for an awfully long time, after all. It wasn’t implausible that they had some sort of occult, or ethereal, or what have you, connection. The more Aziraphale thought about it, the more convinced he was that Crowley was in some sort of trouble and needed his help.

Aziraphale set down his tea** and headed out the door of the shop. On the street, he paused. The same mysterious instinct that was telling him that Crowley was in danger was helpfully being specific enough to tell him that Crowley was in danger in his flat. Aziraphale felt a sudden powerful urge to get there as quickly as possible, but because he never had a need to get anywhere very quickly, he had no means of transport. No means save one.

Without even thinking about it, Aziraphale unfolded his wings and took off into the air. Not thinking about it was an important part of the flying process, otherwise wings tended to get tangled together. It was all muscle memory, like riding a bike. He rose higher, above the rooftops, aiming for the general direction of Crowley’s flat and accelerating rapidly. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d flown. Current thinking in Heaven disapproved of the practice. They didn’t want humans seeing angels in flight and getting any strange ideas. Save all that for the grand finale, they said. Well, Aziraphale didn’t care what Heaven thought or how many humans saw him or what strange ideas they got.***

Landing gracefully in front of the building, Aziraphale burst inside and made his way to the door to Crowley’s flat. He would feel silly if he arrived and Crowley was in there listening to the radio or yelling at his plants or whatever else he did when he was home alone. But as he approached the door, Aziraphale could hear muffled thumps and then a low groan of pain. Someone was hurting Crowley.

Filled with righteous fury, Aziraphale threw the door open. He wasn’t even aware that he was radiating heavenly light until he saw it shine off the scene before him. Three demons were standing with wooden bats over Crowley, who was curled up in agony on the floor. At the sight, Aziraphale was ready to dredge up some old-time religion on those demons, but they disappeared in terror at the sight of him before he had the chance. Aziraphale didn’t try to go after them. Hellhounds couldn’t have dragged him away from Crowley, who looked so much more vulnerable than Aziraphale had ever seen him. He was curled up on the floor, clutching his ribs, his sunglasses lying broken next to him.

“Oh, Crowley,” Aziraphale said, and dropped to his knees next to him. He immediately started running his hands over Crowley, radiating healing energy. He didn’t want to see that look of agony on Crowley’s face for a second longer.

“That was impressive, angel,” Crowley said, his voice thick with pain. “Didn’t know you had it in you. Like something from the old days.”

Aziraphale didn’t reply, because all his efforts were focused on healing Crowley’s wounds. But despite that focus, the wounds were not healing. Aziraphale could feel the familiar warmth leaving his hands, but then it seemed to dissipate uselessly away. Grimacing, he tried harder. He was a bit rusty, it was true. It had been years since he had healed anything more serious than broken bones. But not even Crowley’s broken ribs were healing, never mind the more serious injuries that Aziraphale could sense were there. “It’s not working,” Aziraphale said aloud. “Why is it not working?”

“Maybe because I’m a demon?” Crowley suggested. “Can angels heal demons?”

Aziraphale didn’t know. He was unaware of any theological writings on the subject, probably because no one had ever imagined a situation in which it would come up. “What’s the good of being an angel if I can’t even –” he had to stop speaking, because he could feel a sob welling up inside him. Taking a deep breath, which wasn’t strictly necessary for an angel but always helped to fortify one’s resolve, he once again moved his hands over Crowley, letting Heaven’s healing energy flow through him. Heaven’s healing energy continued to seem disinclined to do much of anything.

Crowley grabbed Aziraphale’s wrist. “Just stop that for a minute,” he said irritably. “I need to tell you something important, and I can’t tell if you’re listening while you’re waving your hands around like that.” Crowley also took a deep breath for fortification, although his made him gasp in pain. “They know,” Crowley choked. “Hell knows about the bit with the hellfire and holy water and rubber duck. And they’re sending word to Heaven too.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale said. He was aware that this was bad news, but he couldn’t get too worked up about it while faced with the more immediate bad news that Crowley was injured, possibly mortally wounded, and there didn’t seem to be anything Aziraphale could do about it.

“So you need to leave,” Crowley went on. He still hadn’t let go of Aziraphale’s wrist. “They’ll be coming for you next, and this is one of the first places they’ll look. You need to find somewhere to lay low.”

“You mean _we_ need to find somewhere to lay low,” Aziraphale said slowly.

Crowley laughed, which sounded like it hurt. “Oh, I’ll be laying low all right. I’m pretty sure I’m about to disincorporate.”

“Crowley, you can’t,” Aziraphale said, now on the verge of complete panic. “You’re off the payroll. They won’t let you just sign out another body.”

“Somehow, I think getting another body will be the least of my worries when I’m back in Hell,” Crowley said grimly. At the look on Aziraphale’s face, Crowley continued in a softer tone, “Look, I’ll be all right. I mean, I won’t really be, obviously. Just seems like the sort of thing I should say. Anyway, it’s been, well, you know.” He gave a final squeeze of Aziraphale’s wrist and then withdrew his hand.

Aziraphale had cleared the verge and was now fully in the roadway to panic. It sounded very much as if Crowley had just said goodbye to him, and that was something he could not allow. The thought of facing eternity without Crowley was simply unthinkable. So Aziraphale didn’t think about it. Instead, he stood up with determination. “No, I won’t let you,” he said. “If I can’t help you, I’ll find someone who can.”

Aziraphale saw Crowley’s sunglasses lying broken on the floor. The sight made him unaccountably sad, so he picked them up. Upon his touch, the frames unbent themselves and the glass reformed into perfect black shades, without any conscious effort on Aziraphale’s part. “Of course, I can fix _those_ ,” he muttered to himself bitterly.

Then he gingerly picked Crowley up, trying to not jostle any of his injuries. Apparently, there was jostling, because Crowley moaned a bit. “Sorry,” Aziraphale added. He saw that Crowley had gone pale and was possibly losing consciousness, and Aziraphale’s panic shifted into a higher gear. “Crowley, if you disincorporate, I swear I’ll never speak to you again,” he said, fully aware of how ridiculous a threat that was. But it had the effect he wanted, which was that Crowley laughed again.

Aziraphale headed out into the street, Crowley in his arms. Passersby saw a desperate man cradling a badly injured man, then looked quickly away, figuring that if they were interviewed by the police later, they could at least honestly say that they hadn’t gotten a good look. Aziraphale made his way to Crowley’s Bentley, which was parked as always in a perfect spot that didn’t exist for other people. Aziraphale opened the passenger-side door† and managed to get Crowley into the seat with minimal jostling. Crowley’s head drooped down to one side. He was well and truly out of it now. Aziraphale conscientiously buckled Crowley’s safety belt, then made his way to the driver’s side with some apprehension, tossing the sunglasses onto the center console. He got in. He sat down. He closed the door. He stared at the bewildering array of knobs and levers and dials before him. How was it that Crowley turned on the car? He usually just pointed at it, didn’t he? Aziraphale pointed at the ignition like he had seen Crowley do, and the engine roared to life.

Crowley came to life at the sound. “What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded in abject horror.

“Well,” Aziraphale said, trying to project calm, “we need transport, and you’re in no state to drive –”

“You don’t know how to drive. I don’t just mean that you’ve never done it before. I don’t think you even understand how it works on a theoretical level.”

That was an accurate assessment, but Aziraphale said, “I’ve seen you do it enough times.”

“You’re going to discorporate us both, and what’s worse, you’re going to destroy my car. My car, that I’ve had from new, that I drove through a ring of fire during the Apocalypse –”

“So tell me what to do,” Aziraphale snapped.

Exasperated, Crowley explained the function of the brakes and accelerator and gear shifter. Aziraphale listened closely, nodded his understanding, then shifted the car into drive and immediately ran it up the sidewalk across the street. The car crashed into a set of tables and chairs at a café, all of which were miraculously‡ unoccupied.

“That’s not how the steering wheel works!” Crowley shouted.

“Well, you didn’t explain that!”

“I didn’t realize I needed to!”

After they had both calmed down, Crowley explained, with great patience, the function and operation of a steering wheel, and Aziraphale took off again. This time, it went a bit more smoothly. He still weaved erratically from one side of the narrow street to another. Pedestrians leapt out of the way. Bicyclists leapt out of the way. A rubbish bin may have leapt out of the way. But soon Aziraphale made it to the relatively unobstructed realms of the M25, and there he hit his stride. The thing was, people have very good survival instructs, which appear to have evolved over millions of years of evolution but of course were really just made to look that way as one of the Almighty’s little jokes. In any case, the same instinct that tells hunter-gatherers that there is a lion stalking them on the savannah is remarkably effective in also telling drivers that there is a maniac in a vintage car coming up the lane behind them with no regard for the laws of the road or even of physics and that they had better get out of the way. So the M25 traffic parted before the Bentley like the Red Sea before Moses. Even Crowley had to grudgingly admit that Aziraphale wasn’t doing that badly. The excitement of the impromptu driving lesson had given Crowley a second wind, but it was winding down as they approached the outskirts of London, and he was fading again.

“Well,” he said, slurring his words a bit as he looked sideways at Aziraphale with a sort of drunken grin, “this is how I’d want to go anyway. Nowhere I’d rather be.” Then his head drooped down to his shoulder again.

“Crowley?” Aziraphale glanced over and saw that Crowley had lost consciousness completely this time. What was worse, he was paler than before. He looked dead. “Crowley?” Aziraphale said again, with greater urgency. He reached out his left hand to put against Crowley’s neck. The skin was cold, but that was normal for Crowley. It was also clammy, which was not. Aziraphale could feel a fluttering beat against his hand, and he sighed in relief. But it was clear that he needed to get Crowley to help quickly.

Aziraphale drove faster, pushing the Bentley to its limits. “I’m a speed demon, Crowley,” he murmured as he overtook every other vehicle on the road. Crowley, of course, didn’t respond. “I’m going faster than everyone. You’re never going to believe this when I tell you about it,” Aziraphale said with fierce determination. He had kept his hand on Crowley’s neck, needing the reassurance of feeling his pulse. He also kept looking over at Crowley. The fact that one of Aziraphale’s hands and both his eyes were no longer fully engaged in the process of driving didn’t notably impair his performance. Other vehicles continued to make heroic efforts to get out of the Bentley’s path, and Aziraphale continued to blow past every other vehicle, intent on reaching his destination.

He didn’t know what his destination was, but he did know he had one. Something was drawing him like a magnet, and he was going to follow it. It was only when he saw the sign for the side road that led to Lower Tadfield that he realized where his destination was. Of course. They had human allies there, one of whom was a reformed Antichrist with unimaginable powers, one of whom was a skilled witch, and one of whom, well, broke computers and probably had some other skills too. If any humans could help Crowley, it would be those humans. Besides, as far as Aziraphale knew, the protective bubble Adam had formed over the Tadfield area was still in effect, which would help them avoid detection by both Heaven and Hell. That wouldn’t do a lot of good if the other angels and demons figured out where they had gone and went to investigate directly, but Aziraphale doubted they’d think of it. To them, humans were just pawns in the great cosmic chess game, so it wouldn’t occur to them that Aziraphale and Crowley would go to humans for help.

Now that Aziraphale was aware of the decision he had made, he followed the signs to Lower Tadfield. It was dark by now, but he remembered the roads well enough that he was able to drive right up to the door of Jasmine Cottage, where he and Crowley had dropped off Anathema Device that night five years ago and accidentally stolen her book. The cottage was lit up in a friendly sort of way, and an appallingly hideous car was parked in front. As he pulled up the drive, Aziraphale honked the horn, a function Crowley had mentioned in his mini-lecture on the steering wheel.

As he waited for someone to come, Aziraphale suddenly wondered if Anathema and Newt even lived in the cottage anymore. Anathema had been renting it, after all. Maybe the two of them weren’t even together anymore. Five years was a long time for humans. But he needn’t have worried. Inside the cottage, a curtain moved and a familiar face peered out. Then another familiar face peered out. Then a third face, unfamiliar and much smaller, also peered out.

Aziraphale sighed in relief and turned to Crowley. “We’re here,” he said. “They’re going to help you.” What the humans would be able to do, Aziraphale had no idea, but he had to believe that it was all going to work out. The alternative was too terrible to contemplate.

* * *

*They would have been even more embarrassed if they had known that the scrolls were in fact genuine. It was just that Matthew and Luke had gotten really drunk one night and started writing down all the funny things that Jesus had done while he was hanging out with his disciples in between giving sermons on mounts and healing lepers. For example, he was known to occasionally tap-dance across ponds, and he sometimes turned entire rivers into wine just to see how the fish liked it. (They didn’t.) These writings are what are politely termed apocrypha, a Greek word meaning _nothing to see here, move along_.

**As will become clear, Aziraphale would not return to the bookshop immediately. Much as this is the beginning of his story, it is also the beginning of the story of the tea that was left behind. Periodic updates will be provided on what the tea is up to.

***In fact, on the short flight between the bookshop and Crowley’s flat, exactly 217 humans saw Aziraphale flying as they looked out of their office windows or up from their traffic-bound cars. As for the ideas they had about it, it is a little-known fact of human psychology that there is far less variation among individuals than there is across generations. In other words, to a remarkable degree, people are a product of the times they live in. For example, in the fifth century, people seeing an angel in flight would have fallen to their knees, crying, “It is an angel sent by God! Miraculous tidings are upon us!” In the 1950s, people would have stared up in wide-eyed wonder, shouting, “It’s a bird! It’s plane!” The 21st century is not an age of miracles or wonder. The reaction of every single one of the 217 people who saw Aziraphale’s flight was something like this: “Hey, there’s a man flying with a jetpack or something. Must be one of them guerilla marketing campaigns. Hang on, let me get my phone, I bet the video will go viral. Oh, never mind, he’s gone. Oh well.” Then they went back to their spreadsheets or traffic.

†Crowley always left the Bentley unlocked. Anyone who tried to steal or vandalize the car would be very sorry indeed, but Crowley hoped in vain that someone would at least break in and steal his _Best of Queen_ tapes.

‡Actually, there was nothing miraculous about it. This was the café that Crowley had cut off the WiFi to a short time before, so it was currently deserted. A minor act of evil had become a major act of good.


	3. Chapter 3

It was almost bedtime, and Sage* was running amok. No, Anathema corrected herself. It was not almost bedtime, because the concept of bedtime was an authoritarian manifestation of arbitrary discipline. And Sage was not running amok, she was expressing her individual will. She was expressing it with a trail of crayon scribbles and stuffed animals strewn between the kitchen and the entryway. Right now, she was crawling on the floor and roaring like a lion. Anathema tried to gently cajole her daughter into her bedroom by implying that there was a herd of wildebeest there, but Sage was wise to that sort of trick by now.

Anathema looked at Newt, who shrugged mildly in a way that screamed _I told you so_. Newt, after all, had advocated a more traditional parenting approach, but he had, as always, yielded to Anathema’s more strongly expressed opinions. Anathema sometimes wished he wouldn’t do that. Sometimes she needed to be saved from herself and her own wild ideas. Like the idea, for instance, of raising their child using Affirmational Parenting. Anathema had read about it in the _New Aquarian_ while she was pregnant with Sage and thought it sounded like a great idea. Recognize and affirm the special being that is your child, the article said. Let a child be a child, without imposing your rigid adult notions of time and order on the flourishing of that beautifully creative spirit. It had gone fairly well right up until Sage had learned to walk, and then there had been a precipitous decline in how well it was going when she also learned to run and jump on furniture and throw things. Anathema looked down at her pregnant belly. The thought that in just a few months there would be _two_ special beings whose creative spirits she would have to affirm was not an amusing one.

The nightly household ritual of chaos was interrupted by headlights shining through the cottage windows and someone honking a horn with great enthusiasm, as if they had just discovered how car horns work. “Who is _that_?” Newt said, peering out the curtains. Then he said, “Oh.”

“What, who is it?” Anathema asked, crossing the room so she could also peer out the window. Then she also said “Oh.”

“I wanna see!” Sage screeched, turning from lion back into human girl amidst the greater excitement of nighttime visitors. She leapt onto the back of the sofa so she could also peer out the window. “Funny car!” she reported.

“I know that car,” Anathema said. “They were driving it the night they stole Agnes’s book.”

“The angel and the demon,” Newt said. “What’s their names.”

“Aziraphale and Crowley,” Anathema said. After they had averted the Apocalypse, Aziraphale had taken a few moments to chat with her about Agnes’s prophecies while Crowley had lurked nearby impatiently. Then the angel and demon had taken off to catch a bus to Heaven or Hell or London or wherever it was they were going, and that had been that. Anathema and Newt had not seen or heard from the strange duo since.

“Well, this can’t be good,” Newt said matter-of-factly.

“No, it can’t be,” Anathema agreed. “I guess we’d better go see what they want.” She followed Newt outside, hoisting Sage onto her hip as they went. It was times like these when she wondered if maybe they should have kept Agnes’s sequel book of prophecies after all. Life had been easier when she had always known what to expect.

Light from the cottage spilled across the drive, showing that Aziraphale had gotten out of the Bentley and was crouching by the passenger’s side door. “I’m terribly sorry to disturb you this evening,” he said to Newt and Anathema, “but we need help. He’s hurt.”

Anathema could see Crowley inside the Bentley. He wasn’t moving. “Let’s get him inside,” she said.

Aziraphale and Newt carried Crowley into the cottage, laying him down on the sofa. In the stronger light inside, Anathema could see that Crowley’s face was pale, although she still couldn’t see what the injuries were.

“I’ll take her to bed,” Newt said to her in a low voice, holding his arms out for Sage. Anathema nodded and handed the toddler over. Sage yawned like a lion as Newt carried her off toward her bedroom.

“What happened?” Anathema asked Aziraphale as she got her medicinal herbs together.

“Demons. They beat him,” Aziraphale said flatly.

“I suppose you two aren’t very popular among your own kind.”

“No. Especially not since that whole business five years ago. That’s why I came to you, I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go—”

“It’s all right.” Anathema grabbed a pair of scissors and held them up to Crowley’s jacket, but Aziraphale yelped as if he’d been burned.

“What are you doing?”

“I need to see his injuries.”

“You can’t ruin that jacket. He’s had it for years. He would be devastated.”

Anathema paused, wondering if she should point out that Aziraphale could just miraculously heal the jacket later, but she could see from the angel’s face that he was determined not to let anything else of Crowley’s get damaged. He was also determined that Crowley would be around to be devastated over the destruction of the jacket, something that Anathema was not sure of given how Crowley had not stirred at all. So she just said, “Help me get it off him then.”

Between the two of them, they managed to wriggle the jacket off of Crowley. Aziraphale did consent to her cutting through Crowley’s shirt, and she had just exposed his chest and abdomen when Newt came back into the living room.

“What did _that_ to a demon?” Newt asked, staring in horrified fascination. Crowley’s torso was completely covered in dark bruises, resembling an apple that someone had started to press into cider before losing interest and chucking it out a window.

“Other demons. With cricket bats,” Aziraphale said. He was watching Anathema anxiously. “Can you help him?”

“I don’t know,” Anathema said. She felt around Crowley’s ribcage. “He definitely has some broken ribs. And I think he’s bleeding internally.” Crowley’s skin was cool and clammy, a sign of shock.

“That’s not – fatal or anything, is it?”

“It can be.” Not at all sure that it would help, Anathema started bundling some herbs into a poultice.

Aziraphale’s face went as pale as Crowley’s. “Please, Anathema, you have to save him.”

“I’m sure this is an idiotic question,” Newt piped up. “But, um, aren’t you two immortal? Surely a demon can’t be taken out with a cricket bat?”

“These are human bodies,” Aziraphale said distractedly. “If our bodies die, we go back to where we came from. And it’s really, really not safe for Crowley to go back to Hell at this time.”

“Oh,” Newt said. He and Aziraphale watched as Anathema held the poultice against Crowley’s abdomen.

“Is that going to heal him?” Aziraphale asked hopefully.

“I don’t know. All I can do is try.”

“I know you’re doing your best. Thank you.” Aziraphale was literally wringing his hands, which Anathema had never seen anyone do before. After a moment, he said, “Maybe Adam could also do something to help?”

“Adam?” Newt said skeptically. “I doubt he’ll be able to do anything. He’s, well, not _normal_ now, exactly, but reality doesn’t seem to do whatever he wants anymore.”

“It’s worth a try,” Anathema said tersely. “Text him.” She felt that she was coming up against the limits of what she could do herself.

So Newt sent Adam a text, and Anathema held the poultice against Crowley’s torso and muttered some incantations, and Aziraphale paced the floor and wrung his hands. It wasn’t long before they heard the approach of a bicycle and a step at the front door. They all looked up as Adam entered the cottage.

He still had the red rosy cheeks and tousled blond hair he had had as a child, but now was tall and gangly with the slightly Frankensteinian look of a teenager whose limbs were all growing at different rates from the rest of his body. “So you two are back,” he said to Aziraphale. “Is the world ending again then?”

“No,” said Aziraphale, who looked as if the world was indeed ending. “But Crowley is hurt, and if there’s anything you can do –”

Adam came over and placed his fingertips on Crowley’s forehead. He frowned. “He’s dying,” he said.

Aziraphale made a low sound that might have been a sob.

“I wish I could help,” Adam said somberly. “I always liked the old demon. Hard not to like someone who causes that much trouble. But ever since I said that my human dad is my real dad, well, I guess I made him my real dad. I can’t change things just by thinking about them anymore. If I could, all the girls at school would be mad over me and I wouldn’t have to do homework and I’d be the captain of the football team instead of Greasy Johnson. So I can’t do anything.”

There was silence as everyone digested this news. Then Newt tentatively spoke up.

“Stupid idea here, but … why can’t we just take him to the hospital?”

More silence. Then Anathema said, “Can anyone think of a reason why that’s a stupid idea?”

Aziraphale looked taken aback. Clearly, it hadn’t occurred to him to take Crowley to a hospital, for the same reason it wouldn’t occur to someone to take their car to a bakery to get detailed. Just like cars and cakes, demons and humans were fundamentally different things**. “Well, it is his human body that needs healing,” Aziraphale said slowly. “Humans know how to fix other humans, don’t they?”

“The hospital would be a good place for you to hide out anyway,” Anathema said. “It’s morally neutral. All the good of people saving lives is balanced by all the evil of the paperwork and bureaucracy.*** So you two should be able to stay under the radar as long as you don’t get all extravagant with the miracles.”

Adam nodded. “Should do.”

“Well, let’s go then,” Aziraphale said.

“I’ll take them in Dick Turpin,” Newt said to Anathema. “You can stay here with Sage. Adam, are you all right getting home?”

“Yup,” Adam said, already making for the door. “Good luck.”

Newt and Aziraphale once again carried Crowley outside and loaded him into Dick Turpin. Adam got on his bike and road off in the direction of his house. Anathema stood in the window, watching Dick Turpin pull away. When it was gone, she went to sit in Sage’s room for a while. With Sage asleep and everyone else gone, the cottage suddenly seemed very quiet and empty.

* * *

*Sage Agnes Pulsifer-Device was Newt and Anathema’s two-year old daughter. Newt had initially objected to this choice of name, arguing that they should give their child a normal name. As justification, he claimed that he had been bullied in school for his unusual name. Anathema pointed out that Newt had been bullied in school for a long list of reasons and that his name was near the bottom of that list. Newt had reluctantly conceded the point.

**Actually, where the analogy breaks down is that demons and humans are far more different from each other than cars are from cakes, as the feeling of accelerating a Porsche is remarkably similar to the feeling of a mouthful of caramel cheesecake.

***This statement is accurate for NHS hospitals. In US hospitals, the for-profit healthcare industry tilts the balance firmly on the side of evil.


	4. Chapter 4

All the way to the hospital, Aziraphale sat in the backseat of Newt’s appallingly hideous car, holding Crowley’s head in his lap. He held the poultice Anathema had made over Crowley’s injuries. He also tried again, reflexively, to heal the wounds himself. He didn’t know if either the herbs or the healing energy was helping, but he kept them both up for the entire drive. Crowley was now so still, Aziraphale was afraid he’d disincorporate before they made it to the hospital.

But make it they did. Newt pulled right up to the doors of the emergency room, and a group of scrub-clad people came running out. They loaded Crowley onto a gurney and started wheeling him inside. Aziraphale ran after them, not wanting to be separated, and Newt abandoned the car to follow after Aziraphale. The medical personnel started asking questions about Crowley and what had happened to him, and Aziraphale was at a loss of what to say. But then Newt stepped in with a smoothness that was not at all characteristic of him.

“His name is Anthony Crowley. He’s my uncle. And this is his – partner,” he said, gesturing at Aziraphale.

“And what happened to him?” asked one of the medical people.

“He was beaten. With cricket bats. It was a mob of – um, drugged-out teenagers.”

“Lord, what is the world coming to,” one of the medical staff, an older woman, tutted. “This country’s going to hell in a handbasket, I can tell you that.”

They arrived at a set of double doors, and another medical person, a young man, stopped them. “We have to take him in for scans now,” he said, and pointed to a waiting area. “You can wait here.”

They started to push Crowley’s gurney through the doors, but Aziraphale said, “Wait. Please.” He laid his hand on Crowley’s arm, wishing that Crowley would just open his eyes and look at him. At the thought of Crowley’s eyes, Aziraphale realized that, when he did open them, the medical people would probably have some questions about them. So he risked a quick minor miracle so that none of the humans would notice Crowley’s eyes or give them a second thought it they did. Then he whispered to Crowley, “I’m very upset with you for scaring me like this, and when you’re better I’m going to shout at you over it, so prepare yourself for that.” Unable to help himself, he gave Crowley’s forehead a quick kiss, then the gurney was rolled away and Aziraphale was left staring at the double doors that he had vanished behind with the medical team.

“Um, I need to go move Dick Turpin,” Newt said from behind him.

“What?” Aziraphale’s mind did not have the resources to spare on wondering who or what Dick Turpin was.

“My car. It’s – never mind. I’ll go move it, then I’ll be right back. All right?”

“All right.” Feeling lost, Aziraphale sat in one of the chairs in the waiting room.

A nice lady came by and gave him some paperwork to complete. He was still staring at the forms as if they were written in cuneiform* when Newt returned.

“Here, I’ll take care of those,” Newt said, grabbing the clipboard from Aziraphale’s unresisting hand.

Newt set his imagination loose on the forms, inventing a rich and detailed backstory for Anthony Crowley, including his contact information, medical history**, and various identification numbers. After Newt had turned in the completed paperwork, there was nothing to do but wait.

“Does it always take this long?” Aziraphale eventually asked.

Newt glanced at his watch. “It’s been twenty minutes.”

“So – that’s not a long time?”

“No. It’s going to take a lot longer.”

After a lot longer, a scrub-clad woman called out Newt’s name. Aziraphale jumped up, and Newt followed him over to speak to the lady, who introduced herself as Dr. Sullivan.

“Mr. Crowley has three broken ribs, a pneumothorax, and a ruptured spleen,” she said. “Due to the severity of his injuries, we need to bring him into surgery right away.”

“Surgery?” Aziraphale repeated. “Will that fix him?”

The woman hesitated just long enough to make Aziraphale panic again. “These are common procedures with low risk of complications under normal circumstances. However, Mr. Crowley is already in critical condition from blood loss, so this is considered a high-risk operation. We wouldn’t proceed if there were any other choice, but we can’t wait any longer.” She shoved a clipboard with a consent form at Aziraphale, who signed it numbly. Then Newt sympathetically guided Aziraphale back to their seats.

“That doctor thinks he’s going to die,” Aziraphale said.

“No, she doesn’t,” Newt tried to reassure. “She just has to tell you the risks. That’s her job.”

“I should have brought him here right away.” Aziraphale stared dully ahead. “Why didn’t I think of it? Stupid.”

“I’m sure he’ll be all right,” Newt said helplessly. “Look, I’m going to step out and call Anathema, give her an update. Looks like we’ll be here for a while.”

“Of course. I’m sorry, I’m sure you would much rather be at home with your family this evening. Thank you for your kindness. People like you are the very best of humanity.”

“Oh, well, thanks,” Newt said in embarrassment, feeling that he was at most in the upper sixty percent of humanity. “Do you need anything while I’m out?”

“What would I need?” Aziraphale asked blankly.

“Nothing, I suppose. It’s just one of those things people say – anyway, I’ll be back.” Newt stepped out into the hallway.

Aziraphale looked around the waiting room. All around were humans, most of whom had an anxious look on their faces, several of whom were crying. As an angel, Aziraphale was very attuned to human suffering, and this place was filled to the brim with it. There was a reason he usually hung around parks and bookshops and fine restaurants. In those places, he didn’t have to think so much about how short human lives were, and how full of pain and sorrow.

An elderly woman sitting across from him caught his eye. She smiled gently and asked, “Who are you here for, love?”

“Excuse me?” Aziraphale hadn’t expected any of the humans to break out of their own worry enough to notice anyone else’s.

“I’m here for my Harold,” she said. “He just had a heart attack. They’re operating on him now. Next month is our forty-fifth wedding anniversary.” As she spoke, she ran a string of rosary beads through her fingers. “And who are you here for, love?”

“My – partner,” Aziraphale said, adopting the language Newt had used. “He was beaten. He’s badly hurt.”

“Oh, that’s terrible. I’m so sorry, dear.”

Aziraphale nodded. “Thank you.” How did humans do it? This woman had spent forty-five years with the man she loved, which to her must feel as long as the six millennia Aziraphale had spent with Crowley. And now she might lose him. She _would_ lose him, if not now, then someday, or he would lose her. Why? Why had the Almighty gone to all the trouble of making people so that they would love each other, then give them such short and fragile lives? That wasn’t ineffable, it was psychotic.

“What’s his name?” the woman asked. “I’ll put him in my prayers.”

“Anthony,” Aziraphale said, not wanting Crowley’s real name to be spoken in a prayer.

“I’ll pray for them both, Anthony and Harold,” she said, bending her head over her rosary beads. Seeing some unreadable expression on Aziraphale’s face, she asked, “Not a believer, are you, love? You don’t think anyone is listening to our prayers?”

“Oh, I know they’re listening,” said Aziraphale, who had gotten the standard tour of the Prayer Surveillance Operations Center***. “I just don’t know if anyone cares.”

“You have to believe that God loves us,” the woman said, her simple faith shining through. “He doesn’t give us anything we’re not strong enough to face.”

Aziraphale didn’t say anything to that. What could he say? He felt like a huckster who had taken this old woman and so many others for all they were worth. He had, at one time, believed in the divine mission. He had devoted himself to that mission, to recruiting souls to Heaven, to preparing for the inevitable day of judgment. And whenever he had wavered, whenever he had wondered why, if the Almighty was so good and powerful, She had created a world in which, every day, children died screaming in pain, elderly people died alone in their homes, people did things to each other that not even the forces of Hell had thought of – whenever he wondered about that, he had comforted himself with the knowledge that it was all part of the ineffable plan. Crowley, of course, had never hesitated to point out how stupid that faith was. And Crowley had been right. During the Almost-Apocalypse, when Aziraphale had seen his own side for what they truly were, he had lost the faith that had once kept him going. Now what kept him going was Crowley. Aziraphale didn’t believe in Heaven anymore, or the divine mission, or the ineffable plan, or God’s love, but he believed in Crowley. And he knew that he was not strong enough to face a world without Crowley.

Aziraphale stood up. He had made a decision without even realizing it. He wasn’t a human. They were stronger than him. Ever since the Garden, they had known pain and loss. That was a gift that Crowley had given them, the knowledge that the world didn’t give a toss about them and that they were on their own, and that had made them strong. But Aziraphale couldn’t sit in this hospital waiting room with all these grieving and terrified humans. Being there was reflecting and amplifying his own grief and terror. He had to do something. And, from somewhere, an idea had come to him about what that something could be.

“Excuse me,” Aziraphale said to the woman. She nodded, still clutching her rosary beads, and Aziraphale felt compelled to add, “Thank you for your prayers. I hope your husband recovers.” He winced at how weak the words sounded, but it was, as Newt had said, one of those things people say.

Aziraphale walked out of the waiting room, then out of the hospital. He crossed the car park. As he arrived at the road, he paused and closed his eyes for a moment. He could feel the familiar tug, the one he had been ignoring for the past five years. That way, then.

Turning, Aziraphale walked along the busy road. At one time, this must have been the same lovely English countryside that surrounded Tadfield. But Tadfield had been spared the curse of the motorway, and this town had not. This town, whatever it was called, had had its heart ripped in two by the motorway, and auxiliary roads like the one Aziraphale was walking along branched off like the many heads of the hydra. The road was decorated with flashing billboards and artfully arranged piles of rubbish. There was no sidewalk and only a very narrow shoulder, so Aziraphale had to pick his way through the roadside ditch, which was filled with a brownish liquid that he optimistically identified as water. The neon lights of the roadside signs shone on the ditch liquid and the discarded plastic water bottles floating within. Cars and lorries swept by, several of them honking their horns in astonishment and outrage that someone was _walking_ on a road like this. Aziraphale through the litter and neon and Doppler-shifted wails of car horns, following the road to Heaven’s door.

In the end, it led him to a shopping mall. That was not as uncommon an entrance to Heaven as one might think. Management was, for whatever reason, fond of escalators. These particular escalators did not lead to the food court or cinema. They were used primarily by Heaven’s agents to report back to the home office, and every angel had a sort of built-in homing device so they could always find their way to the nearest one. A human would not notice these escalators unless they were having a very bad day.

Aziraphale stood in front of the Up escalator, staring as it churned its infinite way to the celestial sphere. He had not stepped on one of those Up escalators in five years, and he hoped that he never would again. He had not come to ride Up. He had only used the Up escalator as a beacon by which to find the other escalator. They always came in pairs, one Up and one Down. Aziraphale supposed that the powers that be appreciated the symmetry of that. They always did like to frame everything as a duality.

Turning his attention to the Down escalator, Aziraphale steeled his courage. He was not, in general, a very courageous being, so initially his courage took the form of some weaker alloy like bronze. He would be a fool not to be afraid of what he was about to do, and Aziraphale was no fool. But he was doing it for Crowley, and there was nothing he would not do for Crowley. At the thought, Aziraphale’s courage finally hardened into steel, and he stepped onto the Down escalator. Unlike the Up escalator, which had an advanced security system, the Down one was left unguarded, based on the sound logic that no one in their right mind would willingly enter Hell.

Aziraphale had been in Hell once before, disguised as Crowley, when he had enjoyed his holy-water bathtime. But he had been a captive then, which meant he hadn’t had much opportunity to take in the sights. Now, he was free to look around a bit more. His first reaction was slight disappointment. He had expected pools of molten lava and rivers of blood, as that was what the advertisements had promised. But maybe that was all just marketing. Instead, Hell was eerily reminiscent of Heaven. It was darker, and danker, and smelled altogether less pleasant, but in the air was that same officiousness of Important Things Being Done combined with the boredom of Is It Quitting Time Yet. Just like any other office, then.

One way in which Hell was different, though, was that it was filled with demons. This was obviously something Aziraphale had expected, but he had not expected to be so unnerved by it. He had spent so much time with Crowley that he had thought himself quite accustomed to the presence of demons. But, of course, Crowley was no ordinary demon. Aziraphale had sensed a lot of things coming from Crowley – disrespect for authority and skepticism about received wisdom and a fair amount of sheer pettiness – but he had never sensed any outright malice. Right now, Aziraphale was sensing nothing but malice, cold and sharp as a razor, and all of it directed at him. He could feel the demons’ eyes upon him, not snake eyes like Crowley’s, but more like hollow sockets that had their eyeballs nibbled away by vultures. Empty eyes, staring at him like he was the next thing to be nibbled away at. These were not demons who had Sauntered Vaguely Downward. These were demons who had hurtled themselves headlong Down, to the deepest pits of true evil.

A demon stepped into Aziraphale’s path. He was wearing a black suit and had an earpiece, giving him the look of a Secret Service agent. “You’re coming with me,” he said in a tone that brooked no argument. “Boss wants a word with you.”

Aziraphale would not have even attempted to brook an argument, as speaking with a higher-up had been his goal all along. Still, as he was marched through the corridors of Hell, he did have the wherewithal to wonder if maybe, possibly, he was doing something very foolish. Every other time in his life he had wondered that, he had been correct, but then Crowley had been there to save him. He was on his own this time.

Aziraphale was ushered into a corner office, which overlooked a fiery molten pit. His guilty excitement at seeing one of Hell’s famous sights was quelled when he saw that human souls were being pushed into the pit. Their screams provided a constant background sound, like the whirring of fans or the hum of traffic. Above the screams, Aziraphale could hear a low buzzing in his ear. He swatted at it irritably, and a fly dodged expertly into his line of vision. It was then that Aziraphale had a good idea of whom he was meeting with.

“I don’t think we were ever properly introduzzzed,” said a voice from across the room. An office chair swiveled away from the window, and Aziraphale saw the demon who had spoken was sitting in it. Based on the way the chair had dramatically swiveled, Aziraphale had half-expected the demon to be menacingly stroking a cat. But if there was a cat, it was hidden underneath the swarms of flies buzzing around the demon and the maggots falling to the floor. “I am Beelzebub,” the demon intoned. “God of Ekron, Prince of Demonzzz, Tyrant of Tyrantzzz, Bringer of Murder, Dezzztroyer of Zzzities, Bewitcher of Nunzzz†, Lord of the Fliezzz.” After a pause, Beelzebub added, “My pronounzzz are they/them.”

“Er,” Aziraphale said, then started over. “I’m Aziraphale.” He thought that his introduction sounded too short in comparison with Beelzebub’s, but it wasn’t as if he had any titles anymore. “Just Aziraphale, really.” Beelzebub continued to stare at him, so Aziraphale quickly added, “He/him pronouns.”

Looking satisfied, Beelzebub leaned back in their chair. “Well, Azzziraphale, we weren’t expecting any angelzzz to vizzzit uzzz today. If we had known you were coming, we would have prepared zzzomething zzzpecial for you.”

“No need to go to any trouble on my account.” The instinct to be polite was ingrained so deeply into the core of Aziraphale’s being, he was powerless to overcome it. “The place is quite, um, lovely.”

“We had promizzzed you to Heaven,” Beelzebub said with the casual menace of someone who spent their days threatening people and making good on those threats. “But now that you’re here, we’d be happy to have you zzztay for a while.”

“Thank you, but no. Actually, I came here with a business proposition I think you’ll be quite interested in.”

“Oh? What’zzz that? What can an angel do for uzzz?” Beelzebub drew out the buzz, like a wasp about to sting.

“It concerns the demon Crowley.”

“Crowley? The traitor? We know he’zzz coming Downstairzzz zzzoon. We can’t wait to zzzee him. Let me tell you about what our planzzz are for him –"

“Yes, about that,” Aziraphale said, quickly heading off what was sure to be a lengthy and vivid description of what Hell was going to do to Crowley. “Here’s my business proposition. When Crowley disincorporates –” he had to stop for a moment to get himself under control – “you give him a new body and allow him to return to Earth. Without torturing him. And you leave him alone, forever. And in return–”

Aziraphale was cut off by Beelzebub’s laughter. It sounded like a saw gnawing through rotten wood. “What could you pozzzibly give uzzz in return for that? What do you have that we would value highly enough to let the traitor go free?”

“Me,” said Aziraphale.

“You?” Beelzebub sounded dubious.

“Yes, me. I’ll Fall. I’ll become a demon.” The words had an unpleasant taste in Aziraphale’s mouth, but he continued anyway. “Think about it. You haven’t had any new recruits since the beginning, have you? Imagine what a feather in your wing it will be, making a new demon. One who used to be a Principality, who guarded Eden’s Eastern Gate.” Now Aziraphale was on a roll. “Imagine how annoyed they’ll be Upstairs. They want nothing more than to destroy me themselves. You could take that away from them.”

“Petty,” said Beelzebub thoughtfully. “We do like being petty.” They looked at Aziraphale. “You don’t zzzound like any angel I’ve ever met. In fact, you might make a dezzzent demon. But it won’t work.”

“Why not?” The bit of hope Aziraphale had felt was dashed like a ship against a rocky shore.

“Becauzzze,” Beelzebub said disdainfully, “you do thizzz for love. Your love for the demon Crowley. You can’t Fall for love.”

“Of course, you can,” Aziraphale said furiously. “Lucifer himself did. He Fell because he loved God more than humanity, didn’t he? He refused to serve humanity because he didn’t believe they were worthy of God’s love.”

“Well, that’zzz one interpretation. I’ve always thought he Fell juzzzt becauzzze he wazzz kind of a bazzztard. Anyway, you, my friend, are no Luzzzifer.”

“I didn’t say I was,” Aziraphale said, exasperated. “All I’m saying is that it doesn’t matter what my reason is. I am willing to turn my back on Heaven, forever. I’m willing to come Down Here and fight on your side, for eternity. Or you can torture me, do whatever you want to me. I’ll be yours to do with as you please. All you have to do is let Crowley go.”

“Hmm,” Beelzebub ruminated. “You make a compelling argument. After all, what we want izzz to hurt Crowley. And there izzz no better way to hurt him than to hurt you. Crowley will be alone on Earth, while you are Down Here with uzzz, a twizzzted shadow of your former angelic glory, tormented and tormentor, and Crowley will know that it’zzz hizzz fault. You will hurt him more than any of uzzz ever could.”

Aziraphale swallowed at that. He hadn’t thought of it that way. He knew that Crowley was fond of him, of course. He knew that Crowley would miss him, and maybe he would even feel guilty that Aziraphale had gone to Hell in his place. But despite everything else that he was, Crowley was a demon, and demons were fundamentally selfish beings. Aziraphale could imagine Crowley being happy again, eventually, with his Bentley and his flat and the delight he always took in the human world. He couldn’t imagine the same for himself. He could never be happy again, not on Heaven or Earth or anywhere else, not if Crowley was suffering in Hell. In fact, Aziraphale was confident that he himself could make it through whatever Hell had in store for him, just as long as Crowley was all right.

“So give me the contract,” Aziraphale said flatly. “I’ll sign it.”

Beelzebub stared a moment longer, then their face burst into a smile in the way maggots burst from decomposing flesh. They signaled one of their minions, who presented a scroll that was as long as a small car.

Not being an idiot, Aziraphale manifested a magnifying glass and carefully read every line of the scroll.‡ He had to insist on several changes, such as striking the part that required him to kick a puppy every day between now and when the contract came into effect, and removing the stipulation that he would ride the escalator Upstairs on the grounds that his Fall would be more fun to watch from a greater height.

“Worth a try,” Beelzebub said, shrugging.

Finally, when Aziraphale had finished examining every inch of the scroll, chanted a few incantations to reveal any hidden fine print, and sniffed the scroll suspiciously for good measure, he took the fountain pen Beelzebub presented him and signed his name at the bottom of the contract. The pen was filled with blood, which Aziraphale thought was a bit over-the-top.

“Plezzzure doing buzzzinezzz with you, Azzziraphale,” Beelzebub said. Aziraphale thought about telling them he’d see them in Hell, but they didn’t seem like they would get the joke.

Heading back up the escalator, Aziraphale felt strangely at peace with what he had just done. His only concern now was getting back to the hospital as quickly as possible. By dint of the fact that he was not Falling, he knew that Crowley had not disincorporated yet. More than anything, Aziraphale wanted to see him, before it was too late.

* * *

*Actually, if they were in cuneiform, Aziraphale would have been able to read them.

**Newt felt that it would have seemed suspicious if, under “medical history”, he had written “none”. So he gave Crowley a shellfish allergy and a bad knee from a skiing accident.

***It was a high-tech command center, resembling NASA’s Mission Control. Management had only reluctantly adopted the latest technology, since Heaven’s tastes tended toward the old-fashioned. But with the global population boom starting in the Sixties, it had become increasingly untenable to process every prayer by hand and decide which ones to answer. Now they used sophisticated algorithms to ensure a certain randomness, so that a teenage boy’s prayer that his girlfriend let him touch her breasts had an equal probability of being answered as a mother’s heartfelt wish that her missing child be found. If only the most devout and worthy prayers were answered, went the reasoning, then there would be no need for faith, so it was theologically preferential to run the whole business like a cosmic lottery. Special algorithms had been designed to avoid paradoxes, such as conflicting prayers for different teams to win a football match. There was also a process that had been put in place to weed out lame prayers like those for world peace and love, as granting those would completely defeat the purpose of the system.

†There’s a funny story behind that title, but there’s no time to get into that now.

‡The demon lawyers who specialize in Soul Contracts are the same ones who write user agreements for all social networking platforms. Much of the contract language is identical.


	5. Chapter 5

Crowley woke up. That was never an experience he especially enjoyed, but this awakening was considerably less enjoyable than usual. He felt even more sluggish and drained than he had after sleeping through the entire fourteenth century. There was also a suspiciously clean smell in the air, indicating that so many disinfectants had been used that there must be something truly disgusting beneath the lemony freshness. On the bright side, he was no longer in pain. His last conscious moments had been so agonizing that the absence of pain was a positive feeling. In fact, he felt that he was drifting. He hadn’t felt that way since before he Fell.

Suddenly, his slow awakening process sped up as a horrifying thought occurred to him. Floating as if on a cloud, no pain, bright cheery scents – he wasn’t in _Heaven_ , was he? He had been half-expecting to wake up in Hell, and he wasn’t sure which would be worse. He sensed that someone was with him, trying to calm him down. “Zrafl?” Crowley said.

“Huh?” said the someone, who was not Aziraphale.

Crowley wrenched his eyelids the rest of the way open. There was a bright light overhead, but it wasn’t heavenly light, just a flickering light fixture. He was lying in a bed with his chest and abdomen all wrapped in bandages and clear fluid dripping into his veins. The room was one that he recognized, from his years of television viewing, as a hospital room. So not Heaven then, nor Hell, just good old Earth. Crowley’s relief at that was short-lived, as he noticed that Aziraphale was not in the room.

“Where’s Aziraphale?” Crowley demanded of the someone, who looked familiar but who Crowley couldn’t be bothered to remember the name of.*

“I don’t know,” the man said blankly. “He was right there in the waiting room, and I just stepped out in the hallway to call Anathema –”

The name triggered something in Crowley. He remembered Anathema, the witch woman on the bicycle with the book of prophecies. And this was the man who had somehow managed to score with her and was, despite all odds, apparently still with her. Crowley had chalked up the man’s success to the world being about to end, which made some women temporarily lower their standards, but it seemed the bloke had some staying power.

“Darwin,” Crowley said suddenly. The man stared blankly at him. “No, Kelvin,” Crowley corrected himself. “Van Leuwenhoek? I remember you had a ridiculous name, I just can’t remember what scientist it was or what he got wrong –”

“Newton.”

“Oh, don’t get me started on _Newton_. Thought he understood how gravity works just because an apple fell on his head. And calculus. As if the world needed that.”

“Newton Pulsifer. You can call me Newt.”

“I don’t see how that’s any better. Anyway, where did Aziraphale go?”

“I’m telling you, I don’t know. He’s been gone for hours –”

Fear smacked into Crowley like a freight train. He hissed, “Where’s my phone?”

“I don’t know.”

“What is the point of you? Is there anything you do know?” Crowley liked humanity in the aggregate, but he didn’t actually like individual humans very much.**

After some scuffling around, Newt found Crowley’s jacket, then found the phone in the pocket. Crowley snatched it from him before he could accidentally destroy it with his magical computer-destroying powers and rang Aziraphale’s phone.*** It went straight to voicemail. “Angel,” Crowley said, even though he was fairly certain Aziraphale didn’t know how to check a voicemail or even what a voicemail was, “wherever you are and whatever you’re doing, stop right now and get back here. Or I’ll come after you. Don’t think I won’t.”

Crowley tossed his phone irritably onto the bed. “No answer then?” Newt asked. Crowley shot him a withering glare. “No answer,” Newt confirmed.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” Crowley said, speaking to himself more than Newt. “As far as I know, he’s never managed to answer his phone. He doesn’t know how. Or the battery could be dead. He doesn’t understand that it needs to be charged. Or he just left it at the bookshop.”

“All right, then,” Newt said uncertainly.

Crowley glared at him again. “No, it’s not all right.” For all he knew, Heaven had gotten to Aziraphale.

“Oh.”

Crowley picked up at his phone and fiddled with it. He wanted to try texting Aziraphale, but the angel’s ancient phone didn’t the capability to receive texts. It would probably blow up or catch on fire if he tried. “What are you doing here, Newton Pulsifer?” he asked suddenly.

“Well, I thought it best if someone stayed here with you – actually, Anathema thought it best –”

“Yes, and you can tell how grateful I am for that. What I mean is, why are you here in a general sense? Why has the trajectory of your life once again intersected with ours?”

“Well, Aziraphale brought you to our cottage last night. In Lower Tadfield.”

“Clever,” Crowley mused aloud. “Heaven and Hell wouldn’t think that we would go to humans for help. I mean, why wouldn’t we, when that’s worked out so well.” He shot Newt another withering glare, more out of habit than anything else.

“It has, actually,” Newt said defensively. “You’re alive thanks to me.” Anticipating another withering glare, he headed it off by saying, “Well, I mean, thanks to the surgeon who saved your life. But bringing you here was my idea.”

“And losing Aziraphale? Was that your idea too?”

“I didn’t realize I needed to babysit an angel.”

“Heaven is after him,” Crowley snapped. “And those bastards mean business. Don’t be fooled by the harps and haloes. They are ruthless. They might already have him. He might already be –” Crowley stopped and shook his head. “Something is wrong. He wouldn’t leave me.” He would have been embarrassed at how pathetic that sounded, but he refused to be embarrassed by Newton Pulsifer.

“He might have just stepped out for a bit. He was pretty upset about, you know, what happened to you. He thought you were going to die.”

At that, Crowley sat up. The pain came back with the movement, but Crowley didn’t care. He had always had an instinct for when Aziraphale had gotten himself into trouble, and that instinct was screaming at him now. “He went to do something stupid. I don’t what, but I have to find him.” He struggled to get out of bed. Newt lightly pushed him with his fingertips, and Crowley fell back, exhausted.

“You can’t go anywhere,” Newt said. “My daughter could beat you up right now. That’s an insult because she’s two,” he clarified. “Not because she’s a girl.”

“I’ll stick red-hot pokers into your eye sockets,” Crowley said, but the effect was undermined by his grogginess as the next dose of pain medication kicked in.

Crowley continued to mutter threats, which became increasingly incoherent. Newt ignored him, blithely picking up a magazine, which enraged Crowley even further. But it was clear even to himself that he was useless now. If Heaven had Aziraphale, there wasn’t a damn thing Crowley could do about it. Cursing Newton Pulsifer, the hospital, his own frail stupid incorporation, Heaven, Hell, and all the angels and demons therein, Crowley closed his eyes and wished he could manifest Aziraphale here by his side.

* * *

*This was the reaction of at least seventy-five percent of people when they saw Newt. They were sure they knew him from somewhere, even the ones who had never met him before, but they couldn’t think of where. He just had one of those faces, the kind that is familiar but not memorable. Because most people were too embarrassed to admit that they couldn’t think of how they knew him, they went out of their way to be friendly in a vague “Hey, how have _you_ been?” kind of way. As a result, Newt had a skewed view of the friendliness of strangers, which made him friendly to strangers, which in turn made strangers think that they knew him. And thus the self-reinforcing cycle proceeded.

**There were exceptions. Three humans Crowley did like were Lord Byron, Joan of Arc, and an old man who runs a chip shop down the street from Crowley’s flat.

***Crowley had finally convinced Aziraphale to get a mobile phone after the Almost-Apocalypse, on the grounds that they needed to be able to contact each other in case there was another emergency like that. Knowing Aziraphale’s taste, Crowley had gone into a shop, ignored all the smartphone displays, and asked for the oldest phone they had. The shop girl had produced a flip phone, but Crowley had shaken his head, knowing that Aziraphale would consider it too modern. Eventually, Crowley had convinced the girl to go look in the back, where she had unearthed a large brick of a phone, complete with extendable antenna. The other teenagers who worked at the shop had gathered round to gaze at the thing in wonder, as if it were an artifact from a long-lost civilization. It looked antique enough that Crowley knew that Aziraphale would like it. He did, but unfortunately he seemed to think it was for ornamental purposes only.


	6. Chapter 6

Aziraphale walked back into the hospital, his shoes squelching and his trouser cuffs damp from road-ditch liquid. At least, he hoped it was road-ditch liquid and not something he had stepped in while in Hell. He shuddered and brushed at his overcoat. He felt as though there was a cloud of evil clinging to him, which was bad enough, but the smell was even worse.

He walked back into the waiting room where he had been sitting and asked the lady at the reception desk if Mr. Crowley was out of surgery yet. It was now dawn, meaning he had been Downstairs for several hours, so he assumed the surgery must be done by now. Sure enough, the lady directed him to a room where she said Mr. Crowley was recovering.

Aziraphale hurried to the room, his wet shoes squeaking excitedly on the linoleum floor. He liked the sound of the word “recovering.” He had known that Crowley hadn’t disincorporated yet; otherwise Aziraphale would be on the fastest Downward escalator ride of his life. But Crowley had looked so near to death the previous night, Aziraphale hardly dared to hope that he would suddenly be back to his old self.

When he flung open the door to the room, he saw Crowley lying in bed. He had tubes going in and out and was covered in bandages and still looked pale and weak, but he was giving Newton Pulsifer a look so disparaging that Aziraphale saw instantly that his Crowley was back. “Crowley,” he said, feeling himself beaming.

In response, Crowley turned and lobbed a pillow straight at Aziraphale’s face. It looked like he had lobbed it with all his strength, but it fell sadly to the floor a couple of feet short of its intended target. “Where have you _been_?” Crowley demanded.

“Oh, out and about. Here and there.” Aziraphale had the uncomfortable feeling that he was going to have a lot of explaining to do.

“Sixteen voicemails. I left you sixteen voicemails.” Crowley held up his phone accusingly.

Aziraphale wasn’t quite sure what a voicemail was, but he gathered that it was something to do with a phone. He dug through the pocket of his overcoat and pulled out the rather smart-looking mobile phone Crowley had forced him to accept. He stared at its display screen, trying to decipher its mysteries. “Sixteen missed calls,” he said aloud, then looked up. “Oh. I suppose there wasn’t any reception in – where I was.”*

“I thought they got you.” Crowley’s voice sounded hollow.

“Oh, I’m sorry, my dear,” Aziraphale murmured. He came and sat on the edge of the bed. He was sorry. Crowley looked truly wretched. “I didn’t mean to worry you,” Aziraphale continued. “I was worried too. I thought you were going to –" Wanting to change to a happier subject, he said, “You look so much better now.”

“The humans fixed me,” Crowley said.

“The humans fixed you,” Aziraphale repeated. A swell of love for humanity rose within him. They were so wonderful, humans. They tried so hard to figure out how the world worked, even though all the clues that had been left for them to find were tricks and misdirection. They dug up fossils and looked through telescopes and poked at volcanoes, for no other reason than a yearning to understand. And when they did figure something out, like the inner workings of the human body, the lump of clay that God had breathed life into, they used that knowledge to try to make their lives better. They created whole buildings devoted to healing other humans they didn’t even know, even though all they could do was put off death for a while longer. They fought for every moment of human life that could possibly be saved, because they saw what a precious thing human life was, the most beautiful thing of all the marvels that the Almighty had created.

Aziraphale’s swell of love for humanity was so great, it spilled out of him and washed over the corridors of the hospital. On every floor, in every room, patients who had been in suffering in pain suddenly felt soothed. The terminally ill and mortally wounded, who had been terrified of dying, felt peace. Their family members, who had been grieving, felt comfort. Doctors and nurses and janitors and cafeteria workers, walking through hallways or cleaning bedpans in patient rooms or drinking tea in breakrooms, suddenly found themselves smiling contentedly with no idea why. Even the line of surly workers arrayed along the back wall of the hospital on their smoke breaks suddenly noticed what a beautiful sunrise it was, some of them tearing up in joy at the miraculous sight.

In Crowley’s room, Newt got blasted with the wave of love at close range. Embarrassed at the inexplicably intense feelings he was experiencing, and also sensing that three was a crowd, he mumbled something about calling Anathema and stumbled into the hallway.

Crowley waved irritably at the swell of love for humanity like it was a gnat buzzing in his ear. “Stop that, will you,” he said to Aziraphale. “You might as well paint a landing strip on the roof for Heaven’s strike force to make their assault.”

“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale said. With an effort, he let the swell of love for humanity dissipate, and all the humans in the hospital shook their heads and got back to whatever they had been doing, though a faded remnant of the feeling lingered. “I’m just so glad that you’re well again,” Aziraphale continued. “I couldn’t help it.”

“Well, try to contain yourself. Time to lay low. We can’t risk Heaven or Hell finding us.”

“Er.” Aziraphale hesitated. “About that.”

Crowley rolled his eyes at the ceiling, then the floor, then in a sort of indecisive diagonal direction. “For somebody’s sake,” he said. “What did you do?”

“Something that seemed quite sensible at the time, but in retrospect may have been rather foolish.”

“That sounds like you, all right.” Crowley eyed Aziraphale. “Don’t tell me you went Upstairs?”

“No,” Aziraphale said truthfully. “I didn’t go Upstairs.”

“Wait.” Crowley suddenly grabbed the sleeve of Aziraphale’s overcoat and sniffed it. “You went Downstairs,” he said, eyes wide with horror. Gripping both of Aziraphale’s shoulders, he checked him over as if looking for injuries. “How do you still have all your limbs attached?”

“I, um. Signed a contract.”

Crowley released Aziraphale and flopped back onto his pillows, looking stunned. “No. Tell me you didn’t.”

“It’s not that bad.”

“Well?” Crowley’s voice was hard. “Are you going to make me guess?”

“The next time you disincorporate, they’re giving you a new body and sending you back to Earth.”

“And?”

Aziraphale sighed. “And in return, I Fall.”

Crowley stared at him incredulously. Clearly, whatever he had been expecting, it hadn’t been that. “And they went for that?”

“Why shouldn’t they?” Aziraphale felt indignant. “I was a Principality, I guarded the Eastern Gate –"

“Yeah, but look at you.” Crowley gestured at him. “I mean, just look at you.”

“What?”

“You’re not demon material. You wouldn’t last five minutes as a demon.”

“You always say I’m a bastard deep down –”

“There’s more to being a demon than being a bastard. _Anyone_ can be a bastard. To be a demon, you have to be –”

“What?” Aziraphale prompted.

“Selfish, petty, shallow, rotten to the core. You’re not. You’re, well, the opposite of all that.”

“So are you.”

“No, I’m not. That’s exactly how I am. You never understood that about me. You always try to see good in me, but that’s just you projecting what you want to see. It’s not there.”

“Crowley –”

“You shouldn’t have signed that contract.” Crowley was furious at him, in a way that Aziraphale had never seen before. Dimly, Aziraphale was beginning to get the idea that he had miscalculated how much the deal he had made would upset Crowley. “It hurts to Fall, you know,” Crowley continued. “Worst pain I ever felt. Makes all this –” he gestured at his bandages – “feel like a tickle. And then what will they do to you when you’re Down There?” He shook his head. “You shouldn’t have signed that contract.”

“I thought you were dying,” Aziraphale said in a small voice. “You looked like you were already dead. And I couldn’t heal you. I didn’t know what else to do.”

“You could have given the humans half a chance, for starters.”

“Er, yes. I suppose I should have. This whole medicine thing has really come a long way. Last time I paid any attention to what doctors were doing, they were putting leeches on people.”** Realizing that he was getting off track, Aziraphale veered back to his main point. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. It wasn’t this time, and I’m glad, but you will disincorporate eventually, and now, when you do, you’ll be all right.”

“All right?” Crowley repeated in disbelief. “How could I ever be all right when you’re –” Shooting Aziraphale a dirty look, he rolled over and turned his back.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale pleaded. But Crowley ignored him. Aziraphale remembered Beelzebub’s triumphant prediction that Aziraphale himself would be the one to hurt Crowley, more than all the forces of Hell could accomplish. It looked like the old fly-ridden bastard had been right.

* * *

*Aziraphale was correct about that. In Hell’s annual survey of Afterlife Dissatisfaction, the condemned consistently rate poor mobile phone reception at the top of their list of complaints. The WiFi in Hell is surprisingly decent, though. Back in the early 90s, Crowley had been quick to recognize the potential of the World Wide Web and had sent down a memo suggesting that Hell set up servers so that microevil transactions could be attached to each page view. Experts in the burgeoning field of techno-demonology estimate that ninety percent of internet traffic is routed through Hell. Which explains a lot, they add.

**While often derided by modern commentators, putting leeches on people was probably one of the more beneficial practices of pre-modern medicine. It turns out that leech secretions contain several anti-inflammatory, anticoagulant, and anti-microbial compounds, which were a hell of a lot more therapeutic and less likely to kill you than most of the so-called medicines of the time. Although many of these footnotes are of a humorous nature, this one is strictly educational.


	7. Chapter 7

Newt sighed, cricked his neck, and checked his watch. It was 2 pm. Then he remembered that he was no longer working in an office, so he no longer had to find ways to pretend to be busy in order to fill the workday. He was done with his day’s work, so he could quit. He had been working from home for two years now, since Sage had been born, but old habits die hard.

For the first few years after moving to Lower Tadfield with Anathema, Newt had commuted to London. Every time he took Dick Turpin onto the motorway, he was convinced it would be the car’s last ride*. So when he found a company that would let him telecommute as a wages clerk, he jumped at the chance. _Telecommuting_ was an overly grand word for what he was doing. Every day, he would do the sums in the balance sheet by hand, then have Anathema email them to the office. The company he worked for was a tech startup of some sort**. His boss undoubtedly assumed that Newt was using software to handle the balances, but the company had the refreshingly progressive attitude of not giving two figs about how the work got done, as long as it got done. In this way, Newt had finally managed to overcome his technology disability, with the additional benefit of not having to deal with London traffic or to waste time on inane office busywork.

Anathema also worked from home. She ran an online shop selling potions, amulets, and spells. She made quite a bit more money than Newt did.

Having finished his work for the day, Newt headed out of the alcove that served as his office and into the strange domestic tableau that his home had become for the past two weeks. Anathema was sitting at the table, packing orders for her online business. Aziraphale was making tea.***Crowley was lying on the sofa, scowling at Sage. Sage was giggling at the funny faces Crowley was making.

Here is how this state of affairs had come to be. Two weeks before, Newt had shamelessly eavesdropped from the hallway outside Crowley’s hospital room as Aziraphale and Crowley had their tiff. He had decided that his duty was discharged and that it was time to make his escape, so he had crept back into the room after all the shouting ended and asked if there was anything else Aziraphale and Crowley needed. He had meant this, once again, as one of those things people say. But Crowley had immediately piped up and said, as a matter of fact, they needed somewhere to lay low to avoid detection by the forces of Heaven and Hell, and Lower Tadfield seemed like the best bet given that the protective shield Adam had constructed over it still seemed to be intact, and Newt and Anathema seemed to have plenty of room at Jasmine Cottage. Aziraphale had protested that Crowley wasn’t well enough to leave the hospital yet, and Crowley had protested that Aziraphale had a lot of nerve telling _him_ what to do, and there had been so much protesting between the angel and the demon that Newt hadn’t had a chance to lodge his own protest that there actually was not a whole lot of room at Jasmine Cottage. So before he knew it, they were checking Crowley out of the hospital against medical advice, and Crowley persuaded Newt to go delete his medical records so there would be no trace that he had ever been there***, and the three of them piled into Dick Turpin and went home to Jasmine Cottage, where they were greeted by Anathema and her suddenly forced smile.

Aziraphale had been very apologetic about all the trouble Newt and Anathema were going to. He had promised to help out around the house in return. He had been true to his word, taking care of all the cooking and cleaning and making of tea and tending of gardens and trimming of hedges, working all day and all night as he had no need for sleep. Despite the fact that he was using conventional means so as not to draw attention from Above or Below, the cottage had never been so clean, and the landscaping looked like something from a magazine. Anathema had finally had to ask Aziraphale to tone it down a bit, as she and Newt weren’t really the sort of people to live in such an attractive and well-kept home.

Crowley, meanwhile, had initially done little other than sleep. He had stationed himself on the sofa and slept for two days straight upon arrival. Anathema had asked Aziraphale if they should be worried, but Aziraphale had said that Crowley had always liked to sleep and that he probably needed it now. But, one night, after the rest of the household had gone to bed, Newt had come out into the main room and seen Aziraphale sitting quietly on the floor, watching Crowley sleep. Feeling once again that three was a crowd, Newt had quickly retreated back to his bedroom. 

Sage had been instantly fascinated by the strange grown-up who had taken up residence on the sofa, and one day she had gotten a marker and scribbled hearts and flowers all over Crowley’s face while he slept. Crowley had been awakened when Newt, Anathema, and Aziraphale had entered the room and all immediately collapsed in fits of laughter upon seeing him.

“What?” Crowley had demanded, looking like the world’s grouchiest Little Pony.

Anathema had grabbed a hand mirror and held it up to his face. Crowley had rolled his eyes. “Where is that little imp?”

Sage had emerged from behind the sofa, screeching with evil laughter. Crowley had hissed at her, which only made her laugh more.

“Here, let me fix that for you, my dear,” Aziraphale had said, taking pity. He had waved a hand over Crowley’s face and the ink had disappeared.

“No miracles,” Crowley had said, hissing again.

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking,” Aziraphale had said. “But that was such a tiny little miracle, I doubt anyone will notice –”

“You’ve shown that your judgment isn’t to be trusted,” Crowley had snapped. Looking defeated, Aziraphale had gone out to potter around in the garden.

That was how Crowley was these days. He was miserable, and he wanted to make everyone else miserable too. Every time Aziraphale showed him kindness, which was often, Crowley seemed to take it as a personal betrayal. He mostly ignored Newt and Anathema, and they tried their best to pretend he wasn’t there.

Oddly, the only one Crowley got along with was Sage. Ever since the marker incident, he regarded her as a sort of protégé with significant demonic potential. He made grotesque faces at her, which she quickly learned to emulate, turning her eyelids inside out and sticking out her tongue. He taught her the words to the song he had made up for Warlock as Nanny Ashmore, and Sage could be heard singing it as she toddled around the house. He showed her the best places to dig for worms in the garden, although Newt had to put a stop to that when he found Crowley showing the fascinated toddler that you could cut a worm in two and end up with two live wriggling worms. So Crowley ended up making his own contribution to the household as Sage’s favorite babysitter, allowing Newt and Anathema to get their own work done. Newt supposed he should be concerned about the demonic influence on his daughter, but if anything Crowley seemed to take the malicious impulses she already had and channel them into mildly educational ends.

Now, as Newt took a seat at the table to help Anathema pack boxes with protective amulets and vials of love potion, Aziraphale set out cups of tea in front of both of them. “Crowley, would you like some tea†?” he called across the room.

“No.”

“Juice!” Sage called back.

Aziraphale glanced at Anathema, who nodded permission, and Aziraphale poured some apple juice into a sippy cup. He walked over to hand it to Sage, who eagerly took it and downed her juice like a tequila shot. Then she launched herself at Crowley, who was sitting on the sofa staring off into space and therefore unprepared for the incoming toddler.

“Whoa!” Aziraphale caught Sage in midair. “Sage, you have to be careful around Uncle Crowley. He’s still hurt.” He sat down next to Crowley on the sofa, holding Sage on his lap.

Crowley was holding a notepad and pen, which he shoved to Aziraphale without meeting his eyes. “Write it down,” Crowley said. It was the first time he had initiated a conversation with Aziraphale in weeks.

“Write what down?” Aziraphale took the notepad and pen.

“The contract. You did read it, didn’t you?”

“Of course, I did. I’m not an idiot.”

“Could have fooled me,” Crowley snapped reflexively. Then he said, “You have a great memory. You remember the whole thing, right? Word for word?”

“Yes. But why –”

“Just do it.” Crowley got up and stalked away, looking for something to do that would take him away from Aziraphale.

Aziraphale released Sage, who took off like a tiny rocket after her beloved Uncle Crowley. Aziraphale stayed on the sofa and began writing. He kept writing all afternoon, until he looked up and saw that it was time for him to start cooking dinner for the family. Leaving the notepad on the end table, he headed into the kitchen. Newt saw Crowley sit down on the sofa, pick up the notepad, and start reading.

* * *

*In fact, he needn’t have worried. Newt had spent so much time trying so hard to convince himself and others that Dick Turpin was a great car that Dick Turpin had started to believe it and had become a great car. Unfortunately, it still looked like Dick Turpin, so no one took it seriously.

**After two years, Newt had still not managed to work out what products or services the company sold, or how, or indeed if, it made money.

***Two weeks later, the NHS was still trying to repair the mysterious damage that had occurred to their national electronic records system.

†Remember the tea that Aziraphale had left behind upon his abrupt departure from the bookshop? By now, the laws of thermodynamics had, of course, equilibrated the tea’s temperature with that of the ambient environment. A stray mold spore had drifted in through an air vent and landed in the tea. Finding it a suitably warm, wet, and nutrient-rich habitat, the mold had thrived and formed a thick coat completely covering the tea’s surface like a patch of greenish-gray felt.


	8. Chapter 8

Crowley read the contract for the third time. It was written on a thick stack of sheets of yellow lined paper from a legal notepad Crowley had stolen from Newt’s desk, in Aziraphale’s impossibly graceful and delicate penmanship. Reading the angel’s handwriting was like hearing his voice, smooth and elegant and studded with old-fashioned flourishes that no one else bothered with anymore.

The actual words, however, were another story. They were in the dreadful, dastardly language of Hell, and they spelled out Aziraphale’s inevitable future in stark terms. Inevitable, because there was no way out of it. Crowley had been arrogant to think he would be able to find a loophole. Hell’s lawyers were far too slick for loopholes. It looked as though Crowley was going to have to come to terms with the fact that the next time he was disincorporated, that would not be the end of him, but of Aziraphale.

But there was no coming to terms with that. Back when he had been dying on the floor on his flat, he had been none too happy that he was about to meet an ignominious end in Hell, but that was, after all, the way his life had been trending. That was the result of decisions he had made himself, and they were decisions that he would make again. He had been sorry that the same fate would be waiting for Aziraphale in Heaven, but that also seemed to be the natural course of things, and anyway he could go to his death hoping that Aziraphale would somehow escape. Aziraphale was a clever bastard, after all, much more brilliant than all the angels that ran the place put together. Crowley had been able to comfort himself, back then, with the possibility that, after he was gone, there would still be a world with Aziraphale in it.

But now, that possibility was gone. Crowley was now faced with the certainty that, someday, there would be a world that had him in it but no Aziraphale. And that was an abomination. He tried once again to imagine Aziraphale Fallen, and he couldn’t. Aziraphale was good, in a way none of those other prissy and self-righteous angels could dream of being. He loved humanity so much that he had given up the divine mission and the ineffable plan he had spent his whole life fighting for and believing in. For that, he had been made an exile from Heaven. Crowley had never before fully grasped how much Aziraphale had given up during the Almost-Apocalypse. Crowley himself hadn’t lost anything, because he had never believed in his side’s mission. But Aziraphale had lost everything. Maybe that was why he had thrown in the towel and signed that contract, because he believed it didn’t matter if he was an angel or not anymore, now that he was no longer working for the ineffable plan. But it did matter. Nothing mattered more than that. And that was why Crowley was so angry that he hadn’t been able to look Aziraphale in the eye during the past two weeks.

Crowley threw down the contract. It was past midnight, and the Pulsifer-Device family was asleep. Crowley stood up and wandered into the kitchen. Through the window, he could see that the back light was on. Aziraphale often went out to do garden work in the middle of the night, since he felt a compulsive need to constantly help out with housework but couldn’t do anything inside at night for fear of waking the humans. Crowley liked to imagine that the neighbors assumed he was burying murder victims or something, since night gardening was not the sort of thing a normal person did.

Staring outside, Crowley suddenly missed Aziraphale, which was stupid because the two of them had been living in the same small cottage for weeks now. Sighing, Crowley rummaged around in the cabinets for a peace offering. He found one in the form of a bottle of red wine. A pretty nice one, he noticed as he examined the label. Newt and Anathema had probably been saving it for a special occasion*. Crowley opened the bottle and went out to the back garden.

Outside, the full moon was bright enough that he could clearly see Aziraphale trimming the hedges, which really didn’t look like they needed any more trimming. Aziraphale turned on hearing Crowley’s approach, and his face lit up in the moonlight. “Crowley.”

Crowley loved the way Aziraphale said his name. Literally everyone else in the world said _Crowley_ with some combination of exasperation, disgust, and derision. It was only Aziraphale who said _Crowley_ with joy, like nothing made him happier than Crowley’s presence. But Crowley didn’t say anything in reply. He just went and sat on the garden wall next to Aziraphale, took a sip of wine, then handed the bottle to Aziraphale.

Aziraphale said, “Thank you, my dear,” and took a sip himself. They sat there quietly for a few minutes, passing the bottle back and forth.

Crowley broke the silence by asking, “Are there any weeds I can pull up?”

Surprised, Aziraphale asked, “You want to do garden work?”

“I want to destroy something. And I thought it was probably better if it was something that deserved it.”

Aziraphale pointed to a flower bed. “That one there.”

Crowley got down on his knees and started pulling out any green growing thing that looked too wild and scraggly to belong in a flower bed. He didn’t like having to get down in the dirt. That was the nice thing about houseplants, you could keep them at eye level. Made it easier to intimate and threaten them. But it was satisfying to pull the interlopers out at the root and toss them aside. He could almost hear them screaming.

Something about the fresh night air and the smell of earth reminded Crowley of that other garden, so long ago. “Do you ever miss the time when we were enemies?” he found himself asking Aziraphale.

Aziraphale raised an eyebrow. “We were never enemies. Not really.”

“I mean, back when you didn’t like me.”

At that, Aziraphale laughed. “I always liked you, Crowley. You know that.”

“Well, yes. But you had to pretend you didn’t. Because you were on your side and I was on mine. Do you miss that? Having a side to be on, a just cause to fight for, all that rubbish?”

“What is this about, Crowley?”

“It’s just. I took that away from you. Didn’t I? Just chipped away at it over the years, then gave it a last good kick with the Almost-Apocalypse.”

“No. You didn’t.” Aziraphale took another long sip from the wine bottle. “I was never on their side,” he said finally. “It just took me a long time to realize that.”

“I’m just trying to understand why you did it. The contract.”

“It’s simple. I don’t want to be here on Earth without you. I don’t want to be alone.”

“Well, neither do I. But that’s what you’re doing to me. You understand that, don’t you? You get that’s why I’m angry?”

“I do now. At the time, I was afraid. You know I don’t think clearly when I’m afraid. And every other time I’ve been afraid, you’ve been there to tell me what to do, but this time I was on my own. I am sorry, Crowley. I wish you could forgive me.” Aziraphale’s eyes were huge in the moonlight.

Crowley threw down the last weed and stood to take another sip from the wine bottle. “I don’t forgive you,” he said. “But I’m also tired of being angry at you. So I’m going to take a break from it.”

“Good.” They spent another companionable few minutes with the wine. The bottle was noticeably lighter now, and so were Crowley’s spirits.

There was a suddenly rustling in the bushes on the other side of the garden gate. Having a sudden vision of Heaven or Hell’s forces having found them, Crowley grabbed the hedge clippers Aziraphale had laid down and brandished them threateningly. A moment later, Adam Young’s tousled blond head poked out of the bushes into the moonlight, and a second later the head of his dog also poked out.

“Sneaking into people’s gardens in the middle of the night is a good way to end up with hedge clippers stuck in your neck,” Crowley hissed.

“Cool,” Adam said. “Can I see those?”

“No.” Crowley tossed the hedge clippers back on the ground.

“Can I have some of that wine?”

“Get your own,” Crowley said, throwing back another gulp from the bottle.

“What are you doing here so late, Adam?” Aziraphale asked in a friendlier tone.

Adam shrugged. “Me and Pepper and Brian and Wensleydale were down at the railyard learning how to jump on train cars. They weren’t moving, just parked in the yard overnight, but we figured we should learn how to jump on still ones first before we try moving ones. It’s harder than it looks.” He showed off his skinned elbows. Aziraphale looked like he was restraining himself from healing the scrapes. “Anyways, that’s what we want to do this summer, jump on a freight car and ride around and be hobos**. Brian even has a harmonica, but he can’t play it other than making this noise like a dying cat. But we have time to figure it all out before summer. So then I was taking the shortcut home, but I saw you two out here and thought I’d stop by.”

“Well, it’s nice to see you,” Aziraphale said when Adam seemed to be done speaking.

“Yeah. You were pretty much dead the last time I saw you,” Adam informed Crowley.

“When was that?”

“Adam stopped by the cottage that night I brought you here, before we went to the hospital,” Aziraphale said.

“What, did you invite the whole village over for a look?”

“Just me,” Adam said. “Aziraphale thought I could heal you, but I’m retired from all that Antichrist stuff.”

“Well, we’re retired too.” Crowley held up the wine bottle as if making a toast.

“Why are you so sad then?”

Crowley laughed bitterly. “Go on, angel. Tell him why I’m sad.”

“We don’t need trouble Adam with all that,” Aziraphale said.

“No, I want to know,” Adam said, his curiosity piqued by the aura of intrigue.

So Aziraphale told Adam about the contract he had signed, with occasional rude interjections from Crowley. Adam listened with interest.

“So you’re going to be a demon?” Adam asked Aziraphale when the tale was concluded.

“Eventually, yes.”

Adam looked skeptical. “That can’t be right. You’d be a pretty sorry excuse for a demon.”

“See? See?” Crowley gestured at Adam so emphatically, he almost fell off the garden wall. The wine bottle was nearly empty now. “Wait a minute,” Crowley said suddenly. “You –” he pointed at Adam, missed, and pointed again – “you must know a thing or two about all this business. S’in your blood. I bet you can find us a way out of it. You found a way out of what you were s’posed to do. Lemme get that blasted contract.” He weaved his way through the garden and into the cottage.

“How’s school?” Aziraphale asked Adam to fill the silence. “Studying hard, are you?”

Adam snorted. “Not really. I’m going to be a hobo, remember? No point in studying.”

“Ah, of course,” Aziraphale said politely.

Crowley came back outside, waving the yellow legal pad pages. He shoved them at Adam, who took out a torch to read it by. His excitement at reading a real demonic contract quickly waned as he realized how dull real demonic contracts were.***

“Boring,” he pronounced, tossing the pages onto the garden wall.

“You haven’t even been reading it for thirty seconds,” Crowley said incredulously. “Come on, you’ve got to try harder than that.”

“You don’t have to read it, Adam,” Aziraphale said.

“Yes, he bloody well does,” Crowley snapped. “If it weren’t for us, this kid would be – well, he’d be ruling the world, which admittedly sounds good, but it’s not all it’s cracked up to be – anyway, he owes us.”

“What do you expect him to do, Crowley?” Aziraphale asked wearily. “He’s not a lawyer, he’s just a child—”

“You know what my Aunt Sally always does?” Sometimes, when Adam spoke, the whole world cocked its ear to listen. This was one of those times. The crickets chirping in the grass and the frogs singing in the pond fell silent. The wind stopped rustling the leaves overhead, as if the Earth itself were holding its breath to hear Adam’s next word. Even Aziraphale and Crowley shut up their bickering.

“What does your Aunt Sally always do?” Aziraphale asked.

“Whenever she gets a bill,” Adam said into the hushed nighttime garden, “she always says ‘that’s a highway robbery, that is, I’m not paying that.’ Then she rings up the company and complains at them. They say there’s nothing they can do, but then she says, ‘I want to speak to a manager.’ Then they put a manager on and she complains some more, and finally they just say ‘all right, ma’am, here’s ten percent off your bill, just cause you’re such a special and valued customer.’”

The crickets and frogs lost interest and went back to their own conversations, and the wind sighed through the leaves in disappointment. But wheels were turning in Crowley’s head. “That’s it,” he said. “We need to speak to a manager.”

“I don’t see how that would help,” Aziraphale said dubiously. “I negotiated with Lord Beelzebub themself. The only higher authority than them is _his_ father” – Aziraphale indicated Adam – “and I’d really rather not ring him up.”

“No,” Crowley said, his eyes glittering with an insane glint. “There’s a higher authority than that.”

“Surely you don’t mean …”

“Yes, I do. I’ve been wanting to have a word with Her for quite some time now.”

“But nobody has seen the Almighty since, oh, the start of the Enlightenment.”

“Yeah, right when people started saying, hey, maybe there’s no God, or hey, if there is a God, maybe it’s a psychopath. That’s when She took off in a snit and left your lot to run things.”

“Well, much as I would enjoy watching you berate the Almighty, neither you nor I nor anyone else has a clue where She is.”

“I do,” Adam said offhandedly.

“You do?” Aziraphale turned to Adam in astonishment.

“Yeah. She’s my grandmother. She sends me a card every birthday, sometimes knits me socks that Mum makes me wear even though they’re itchy.”

“Where,” Crowley said, projecting the most casual and cool attitude he could manage under the circumstances, “is She?”

* * *

*As a matter of fact, Anathema’s mother had sent it from California. Newt and Anathema had been planning on drinking it on their anniversary, but then Anathema had gotten pregnant again, so they had stashed it away in a cupboard and forgotten about it.

**Wensleydale had not yet committed to the hobo plan, as he wanted to spend the summer with his girlfriend. He was as surprised as anyone that he was the first of the Them to venture into the world of romance.

***They do get better further in. For example, the eighth page went into a rather lengthy digression on the myriad ways there were to disembowel someone and the uses to which their entrails could be put. The demonic lawyers who draft Hell’s contracts need to let off steam somehow.


	9. Chapter 9

“I still don’t understand what you’re doing,” Anathema said for the fifth time. It was morning, and she and Newt were standing out in the drive watching Aziraphale and Crowley make their preparations for a sudden departure.

“Look, it’s very simple,” Crowley said. “We’re going to find God.” He made a sour face as he said the name.

“Yes, but why?”

“We need to have a word. Resolve our status.”*

“So you think God will, what?” Newt asked slowly. “Let Aziraphale out of his contract? Make Heaven and Hell leave you both alone?”

“Exactly. Now you’re getting it.”

“Why would God care about the two of you? As opposed to all the other beings out there who are suffering?”

“Because I’m not going to shut up about it until She gives in just to make me go away. You can always annoy someone into doing the right thing if you’re persistent enough. It’s one of the fundamental laws of the universe.”

“Okay,” Anathema said. “But how are you going to find God?”

“She mostly just hangs round the garden nowadays,” came a voice from the road. It was Adam, on his bicycle, accompanied by Dog, come to see Aziraphale and Crowley off.

“The garden?” Anathema repeated.

“Of Eden,” Aziraphale clarified. “We know it well. That’s where we met, actually.” He smiled in fond reminiscence.

“So we just have to find it again,” Crowley said. “It’s probably in Iraq. Or Iran.”

“Possibly Armenia,” Aziraphale added. “They hadn’t invented countries yet, so it was hard to keep track of where you were back then. But no worries, we’ll find it.”

“So you’re going to drive your Bentley –” Newt eyed it with naked longing – “to Iraq or Iran.”

“Or Armenia,” Aziraphale said.

“Why don’t you just fly?” Newt asked.

Aziraphale and Crowley both shook their heads. “Too risky,” Aziraphale said. “Above and Below are still looking for us. We’d be too conspicuous with our wings out.”

“I meant in an aeroplane,” Newt said after a moment’s confusion.

“No, that’s a no-go too,” Crowley said. “Airports and airlines are crawling with demonic forces. We have a saying Down Below: when you’re on a commercial flight, you’re not closer to Heaven, you’re on Hell’s top floor.”**

“Aren’t you going to be conspicuous in the Bentley?” Newt offered hopefully. “I mean, if you wanted to swap, you could blend in a lot better in Dick Turpin –”

Crowley laughed in his face. “Nice try, Pulsifer. Hell’s got nothing on a 52-hour drive in a Wasabi.”

Newt nodded, acknowledging that it was a fair point. “Well, good luck, then.” He awkwardly stuck out a hand to Aziraphale and Crowley to awkwardly shake. “You’re welcome to visit anytime. That is just one of those things people say, by the way,” he added hastily.

“We have something for you,” Anathema said. She handed Aziraphale a book. _Lonely Planet Europe_. “I brought it with me when I first came to England. I thought, if I survived the end of the world, after being stuck in _England_ no less, I’d take some time to go to the continent and see some countries that are actually worth visiting. But it turned out I was fine with being stuck in England.” She smiled at Newt, who took her hand. “It’s not an ordinary guidebook,” she added. “I made some modifications. You’ll see.”

“You are a wonderful source of interesting books, Anathema,” Aziraphale said sincerely. “Thank you for your kindness. You look lovely, by the way. Like Eve in the Garden. I know that women were cursed with the pain of labor as a punishment for the apple –” he gave Crowley a reproachful look, and Crowley shrugged – “but I’ve always thought that you all bear your burden with such grace. And it is, after all, a beautiful way for new humans to be created. To be bathed in love.” He put a hand on Anathema’s massive pregnant belly. “And I know your child feels that love and is blessed.”

“Thank you, Aziraphale,” Anathema said. She felt tears spring to her eyes. Damn pregnancy hormones.

Crowley looked impatient. “Are you done, angel?”

“Not quite. I think there’s someone else who wants to say goodbye to you.”

A small pink blur hurtled across the drive and wrapped itself around Crowley’s leg. “Bye, Uncle Cwowwey!”

Crowley patted Sage’s head uncertainly. “Goodbye, little imp.”

“Sage, say goodbye to your Uncle Aziraphale too,” Anathema prompted her daughter.

Sage obediently hugged around Aziraphale’s knees. “Bye, Uncle Zizifell.”

“Goodbye, dear child. You be good now.”

At that, Sage let out an evil cackle and ran off to the garden to dig up, and probably to bisect, some worms. It was clear which uncle had been the greater influence on her.

Adam came up and scuffed against the gravel drive with the toe of his trainer. “Say hi to Gran for me,” he said.

“We will,” Aziraphale said.

“It’s weird, seeing you two again. Back when that whole thing happened, I didn’t even know what I was. I didn’t understand that things were different for me than everyone else. That other people couldn’t get what they wanted just by thinking about it. Or not even having to think about it, just by wanting it. Now–” Adam shook his head. “I can still see the things I want taking form, but I can hold back from making them happen that way. I sort of force them to go away so I can get them the same way everyone else does. Does that make sense?”

Aziraphale nodded. “It means you’re growing up, Adam. You’re becoming fully human. And we’re proud of you.”

“Oh, come _on_ ,” Crowley said. “Is there going to be a musical number to close this out? Can we just get on the road already?” He stalked to the driver’s seat of the Bentley and got in.

Aziraphale gave an apologetic little wave to everyone, then got into the Bentley. “We Are the Champions” started blasting from its speakers, and Crowley executed a backing-out maneuver that transitioned seamlessly into a tearing-off-down-the-road maneuver, all of it at a speed of ninety miles an hour. Flaming tire tracks were not left behind, but if the laws of physics had any sense of drama, they would have been.***

“Well, that’s that,” Newt said to Anathema as Adam got on his bike and rode away.

“For now, at least,” she said.

“What do you think of those two, anyway?”

“Oh, they’re in love. I knew it from the first time I met them, when Crowley called Aziraphale Angel. Of course, I didn’t know at the time that he really was an angel, but I was right about them anyway. Definitely in love.”

Newt stared at her. “Well, _obviously_. I wasn’t asking about _that_. I mean, do you think we did the right thing by helping them?”

“Oh, what is the right thing, anyway? I’ll tell you, I’ll miss the babysitting and the cooking and cleaning.”

Newt reflected on that a moment. “They stole our wine, you know. That bottle your mother sent from California.”

“I know. The bastards.”

With that, they went back into the garden to see what fresh hell their toddler was creating.

* * *

*This was a phrase Crowley had picked up from Adam in another tale of Aunt Sally’s adventures. Aunt Sally had lost her passport while on holiday in Morocco and had gone to the consulate to resolve her status. Adam said that was pretty much what Aziraphale and Crowley were doing.

**Of the world’s ten largest airlines, nine are wholly owned subsidiaries of Hell, and the other one is German.

***You were probably wondering when the actual road trip would start. Here it is!


	10. Chapter 10

The sheep-dotted countryside was a green blur outside the Bentley’s window, with the sheep themselves stretched out into white streaks like the stars when a TV spaceship accelerates to warp speed. Aziraphale braced himself, then realized that he was unlikely to be able to continue bracing himself for the entire 3,000-mile journey. So he made a conscious effort to relax and save the bracing for when it was really needed. Out of a desire to look at something other than the landscape whizzing by at unsafe speeds, he glanced over at Crowley. The maniac glint in Crowley’s eye was not that conducive to relaxation either. In search of a distraction, Aziraphale rummaged around him.

“What are you looking for?” Crowley grumbled.

Aziraphale hadn’t been looking for anything in particular, but he found something. Crowley’s sunglasses, lying on the center console. “I fixed these for you, my dear,” he said, handing them over.

Crowley grinned and put the sunglasses on. Now, wearing his shades and driving his Bentley, he finally looked like himself again. “Wait,” he said suddenly, “when did you fix them?”

“Ages ago,” Aziraphale said impatiently. “Back in your flat. Don’t worry, I know this is a miracle-free journey.”

“All right, then. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

Aziraphale had initially resisted Crowley’s frankly insane idea to go on a quest to find the Almighty. The plan was so flawed, on so many levels, that the only suspense was waiting to see exactly which part of it would go pear-shaped. Would they end up driving in circles around Southwest Asia, vainly searching for the Garden of Eden or whatever it had become? Would they find the Garden only to learn that Adam’s intel was wrong and God was nowhere to be found? Or would they actually manage to find the Almighty only to be laughed at and/or smote by her when they made their ridiculously presumptuous demands? Then there was the outcome that Aziraphale felt was most likely and was most terrified by: that once they left the protective Tadfield bubble, Heaven and Hell would swoop down and up, respectively, upon them. It was that possibility that had prompted a drunken shouting match out in the garden the night before. Aziraphale had pointed out rather reasonably that they were safe where they were and that they had no business going out on pointless suicide missions. Crowley had countered that they were safe except for the giant ticking time bomb that was Aziraphale’s contract with Hell, and that anyway there was no reason to believe that Above or Below would be able to find them as long as they weren’t complete idiots and avoided any use of miracles.* Aziraphale had rejoined that Crowley was still healing and was in no condition for an epic quest. Crowley had retorted that he would disincorporate from sheer boredom if he had to hang round that cottage another day. And on and on it had gone, until even Adam had gotten bored of watching and gone home.

By the time the sun came up, they had reached an agreement. Aziraphale had given in, partly because he couldn’t think of any more ways to say _you’re insane_ , but mostly because he saw that it was important to Crowley. He even understood why. Crowley thrived on insane, long-shot plans. When he saw a burning motorway, he drove through it. It was that exact quality of his that had saved the world. Aziraphale would never have been able to do that on his own, because he hadn’t believed it was possible to stop the Apocalypse. Oddly, Crowley had more faith than any angel. He had faith that, through sheer bloody-mindedness, he could get what he wanted. And Aziraphale had to admit that his track record was pretty good on that. Finding the Almighty and getting a commutation of their sentences seemed marginally less unlikely than averting the Apocalypse had, so if Crowley wanted to take that ride, Aziraphale would take it with him.

So they rode along the narrow lanes out of Tadfield and back to the motorway and the rest of the world. Unfortunately, London was in their way like a fat, oozing slug on a garden path. Crowley expertly weaved them through the morning rush-hour traffic on the M25 orbital, although Aziraphale had to resort to bracing himself again on several occasions.

Their next obstacle was a much greater inconvenience. It was physical geography. Great Britain is an island, unconnected to any other landmass, a fact for which other landmasses are grateful. But Aziraphale and Crowley were not grateful as they joined the long queue of vehicles being loaded onto the Eurotunnel Shuttle.

For reasons that have yet to be explained by psychologists, waiting in a vehicle queue is approximately nineteen times more stressful than waiting in a queue on foot.** While they waited, Crowley drummed his fingers impatiently on the steering wheel. Then he started drumming his head against the steering wheel. Aziraphale tried to distract him by asking ignorant questions about the quality and driving performance of the cars surrounding them, and Crowley cheered up a bit now that he had an opportunity to mock both Aziraphale’s naivete about cars and the poor taste of their fellow Eurotunnel passengers.

Finally, after an hour and a half of waiting, a check-in process, and a haughty interrogation by the French Border Police, Crowley was finally allowed the privilege of driving the Bentley onto the train.

“So,” Aziraphale said as the train was fully loaded and began moving, “we’re in a car that is on a train that is in a tunnel that is under the ocean.”

“That’s right. Might as well be pickled and stuck in a tin. We’re cargo.”

“Why would humans choose to travel this way?” Aziraphale was genuinely curious.

“Humans don’t. The British do.”

After taking twenty-two minutes to cross the Channel, and another hour and a half of waiting to unload, they finally rolled the Bentley off the train and onto the European continent.

Aziraphale stared wistfully at a French flag flying above the tunnel exit. “Seems like a bit of a waste to just drive right through France.” Visions of food and wine danced in his head.

“It’s not really France,” Crowley said grimly. “It’s Calais.”

Soon, they were in Belgium, and not much later, they were out of Belgium. Because they had gotten a late start and had been delayed by London traffic and the Eurotunnel crossing, it was getting rather late in the day. Aziraphale suggested that they stop for the night.

“You want to stop in _Germany_?” Crowley asked.

“Well, we’re almost to Cologne. That’s a lovely city, with the cathedral and all those Romanesque churches –”

“Have you forgotten who you’re with? Anyway, we can just keep going. The car doesn’t need petrol and you and I don’t need food or sleep.”

“You’re still healing, my dear. Don’t you _want_ food and sleep?”

“We’re not on holiday –”

“Yes, yes, I know, we’re on a mission. Still …”

Aziraphale idly opened the _Lonely Planet Europe_ book Anathema had given him. It opened right to the section on Cologne. _The city’s best-known landmark is, of course, its Gothic cathedral, a World Heritage Site – oh. Well, here are some things you can do in Cologne if you or your traveling companion cannot, for whatever reason, enter a consecrated space. No judgment here. Cologne has the most pubs per capita of any city in Germany, and you know the Germans set a high bar for that sort of thing – I see, more of a wine drinker. Fine, here’s a list of the most expensive restaurants in Cologne, you snob –_

“This guidebook is personalized to whoever’s reading it,” Aziraphale said in delight. “Anathema did say she made some modifications to it.”

“Is it telling you that you’re the kind of British tourist that every self-respecting country wants to ban out of sheer embarrassment?”

“No***, but listen, it says Cologne has a restaurant that out-Frances France. And under _Cost_ , it says _Outrageous_. The wine list is as thick as a dictionary.”

“Outrageous, you say?” Crowley sounded as if he was considering it.

“Crowley, let’s stop in Cologne for the night. Just because we’re on a mission, that doesn’t mean we can’t also be on a bit of a holiday. It’s been forever since we went anywhere together.”

Crowley glanced over, and Aziraphale knew he had won as soon as Crowley saw his hopeful smile, misty with the memories of the crusades and inquisitions and holy wars and unholy ones they had been ordered to oversee all over Europe in the old days. No matter where they had gone, or how dark the age had been, they had always managed to find a good bottle of wine. “Oh, all right,” Crowley said. “But stop it with the tempting, that’s my job.”

“I learned from the best.”

So they did stop in Cologne, checked into an outrageously expensive hotel, then went to dinner at the guidebook-recommended outrageously expensive restaurant.† It was as over-the-top as advertised, and they relished the rich food and sampled half the wine list. Heading back toward the hotel, they crossed a bridge. Beneath them, the Rhein charted its regal course through the heart of Europe. Aziraphale found himself weaving from side to side across the sidewalk, and Crowley grabbed his arm to steady him despite being a bit unsteady himself.

“I suppose I shouldn’t drink so much,” Aziraphale said. “I keep forgetting I can’t just sober myself up.” He paused and looked out across the river to where the spires of the cathedral were lit up, the moon shining overhead. “Look at that. It is such a lovely city.”

“It’s all right,” Crowley conceded.

“Do you know,” Aziraphale said, staring at the cathedral, “they’ve got relics from the Three Magi in there?”

“What kind of relics?”

“Goodness, I don’t know. Probably teeth or, or, toenails, it’s always something ghastly like that. Brings back memories, though. I remember when those three went to King Herod to ask where they could pay homage to the newborn King of the Jews.”

“Right, and Herod completely lost it because _he_ was King of the Jews and was afraid of getting usurped.”

“So Herod assembled the priests and scribes and asked them where the Anointed One was to be born. When he found out it was Bethlehem, he sent the Three Magi there and told them to report back to him so that he could also go worship the child.”

“And that was when _you_ got involved. I remember that now.”

“He was going to kill a child.” Aziraphale still felt distressed about it all these centuries later.

“That was the first time you disobeyed orders, wasn’t it?”

“I didn’t disobey, exactly. I wasn’t ordered _not_ to warn the Magi against reporting back to Herod. Or to _not_ tell Joseph to get his family to Egypt. I mean, if Jesus had been killed by Herod as a baby, he wouldn’t have, well, he wouldn’t have died horribly by crucifixion years later and saved humanity from its sins in the process.”

“Right, and that worked out so well,” Crowley said as a drunken carload of British tourists went by, singing loudly and tossing bottles of Kölsch off the bridge.

Aziraphale felt morose now. “And then, of course, Herod decided to play it safe and kill all the infant boys in Bethlehem.” He hadn’t thought about it for so long, as that one act of horrific violence had faded into the background of the other acts of horrific violence he had seen, and sometimes participated in, all in the name of Heaven. But now he vividly recalled standing in the streets of Bethlehem, listening to the wails of mothers’ grief coming from seemingly every house. Crowley‡ had found him there, as he always had when Aziraphale needed a friend. Although neither of them would have admitted that they were friends back then, they already had been. Crowley had come up to him, ready to make a snarky comment, but then he had fallen silent when he saw Aziraphale’s face. Aziraphale had said something about the ineffable plan, and about how the murdered children were the first martyrs and were guaranteed a special place in Heaven or whatever the company line had been. Crowley hadn’t challenged that, seeing how much Aziraphale needed to believe it, but had just casually said that he was off to do some major evil in Rome and that the angel better follow him if he was going to have a go at thwarting his wiles. Looking back, Aziraphale saw that Crowley had wanted to get him as far away from Bethlehem and those wailing mothers as possible.

Now, standing on the bridge over the Rhein and looking at the Cologne Cathedral, Aziraphale could almost hear those wails again. “If I hadn’t interfered, those children wouldn’t have been murdered. But I did exactly what Above wanted me to without even knowing it. It was all part of their plan. And I took comfort in the idea that those babies were martyred to the cause. I didn’t understand it back then, that they had had their lives stolen from them before they even had a chance to live. I didn’t understand how there was no comfort for those families who lost their children.” Aziraphale felt tears come to his eyes. He hadn’t understood grief back then, but he did now. When he had almost lost Crowley, he had felt that same hopeless wail rise up within him.

“Are you crying?” Crowley stared at him in disbelief. “You’re usually such a happy drunk.”

Aziraphale shook his head. “I’m sorry, my dear. Ancient history, I know.”

Crowley took his arm again. “Come on. Let’s get you back to the room. No more reminiscences about child murder. We’re on holiday, remember?” He put his free hand on Aziraphale’s shoulder and kept it there all the way back to the hotel.

* * *

*Knowing Aziraphale as well as he did, Crowley had also played the guilt card by pointing out that they couldn’t keep imposing on Newt and Anathema forever. Crowley knew full well that the Pulsifer-Devices were satisfied with the free childcare and housework they were receiving in exchange for their inconvenient houseguests, but Aziraphale worried endlessly about such things.

**With the exception of queuing to use the toilet at a concert, which is widely known to be the most stress-inducing of all queues.

***The guidebook actually was telling Aziraphale something to that effect, but he was ignoring it.

†Crowley had an American Express card that had never run out of credit even though it had no discernible demonic power. He chalked it up to garden-variety fraud.

‡Crowley had arrived in Bethlehem three nights before and entertained himself by booking up every inn in town for a fictitious shepherds’ convention.


	11. Chapter 11

Crowley sat by the window of the hotel room and glanced over at the bed where Aziraphale was still sleeping. The angel only slept when he was extremely drunk, as he had been the night before. Eager to get back on the road, Crowley abruptly drew back the blinds, letting the bright morning light invade the room. Aziraphale groaned and buried his face into a pillow. “You’re a monster,” he said, his voice muffled.

Taking pity, Crowley went down to the lobby to get Aziraphale a cup of tea*. Upon returning to the room, he placed the teacup on the bedside table, saying, “Here.”

Aziraphale raised his head from the pillow. “You brought me tea?”

“Who else would I have brought it to?”

“Thank you, Crowley. You’re very kind.”

“That’s uncalled for,” Crowley muttered.

The tea provided Aziraphale the strength he needed to get out of bed and into the Bentley, though with little enthusiasm. When Crowley started the engine, “Another One Bites the Dust” began blaring out of the speakers. Aziraphale groaned again, and Crowley quickly changed the radio to a classical station and turned the volume down low. As they headed south out of Cologne, Crowley looked over at the passenger seat. Aziraphale was huddled up with his hands covering his eyes to block out the cheerful morning sunlight. Crowley sighed and took off his sunglasses.

“Take these,” he said, holding them out to Aziraphale.

Aziraphale stared as if Crowley were offering him a raw turnip. “What am I supposed to do with those?”

“Put them on.” Crowley spoke with exaggerated patience. “The light is hurting your eyes. These will help.”

“I’ll look ridiculous.”

“Yes, but that’s just a bonus.”

Aziraphale put on the sunglasses. He did look ridiculous. Crowley laughed at him, but only a little bit.

They continued through the German countryside, and Aziraphale stayed quiet. He felt asleep again for a while, and Crowley got out his phone to take a picture of the sleeping angel in sunglasses. By the time they crossed into Austria, Aziraphale had recovered enough to start waxing poetic about the sublime majesty of the Alps on the horizon.

Dusk was falling as they approached Vienna. Aziraphale had given Crowley his sunglasses back, so Crowley could see his eyes turn longingly on the signs for the turnoff to the city. Making a sudden decision, Crowley veered onto the motorway exit.

“What are we doing?” Aziraphale asked.

“Stopping here for the night.”

Aziraphale smiled in delight. “I love Vienna.”

Crowley knew that, of course. “What does the guidebook say?”

Aziraphale opened _Lonely Planet Europe_. “For a snob like you,” he read aloud, “Vienna’s top destination is undoubtedly the Wiener Konzerthaus, home of the world-renowned Vienna Symphony. Too bad you didn’t plan ahead and buy tickets. Anyway, here’s a list of hotels and restaurants …”

They pulled up to one of the guidebook’s recommended hotels. Before handing the keys over to the valet, Crowley grabbed _Lonely Planet Europe_ and brought it with them up to their room. While Aziraphale was wandering around the room exclaiming over the elegant lighting fixtures and carpets, Crowley opened the guidebook.

_Oh, that’s sweet of you_ , went the writing on the page. Crowley glared at the book and cracked its spine threateningly. _All right, just the facts_ , the text hurriedly continued. _Here is a list of locations where you can buy scalped Vienna Symphony tickets …_

Aziraphale and Crowley walked around the Ringstrasse, examining the monumental architecture. While Aziraphale was distracted by the State Opera building, Crowley snuck away for a few minutes for an intense negotiation with a dodgy-looking man who was selling tickets for that evening’s symphony performance out of his overcoat pocket. Having secured the tickets for half of the man’s initial asking price**, Crowley rejoined Aziraphale, who had been staring in such awe at the opera house that he hadn’t even noticed that Crowley had gone anywhere.

They ended up at a café where Viennese strudels and cakes were laid out like jewels in glass cases. Crowley ordered two slices of cake, knowing full well that Aziraphale would steal one right off his plate. As they finished, Crowley said, “Well, we’d best be going. Normally, I like to be fashionably late, but they don’t approve of that in these grand concert halls.”

“What are you talking about?”

Crowley got out the symphony tickets and handed them to Aziraphale, whose face lit up.

“Crowley! You – you are wonderful.”

“No need to shout it out to the whole city.”

Crowley wasn’t a big fan of classical music, but he was a big fan of watching Aziraphale enjoy classical music. The angel seemed to listen not only with his ears, but with his whole being. Whatever sense of the divine Aziraphale still believed in, it was manifest for him in the works of Mozart and Beethoven. At the end of the concert, Aziraphale turned to Crowley, eyes shining, and said, “I hope that wasn’t too dull for you, my dear.”

Crowley shrugged nonchalantly. “It was fine,” he said, secretly rejoicing that he had managed to lift Aziraphale’s spirits after his melancholy of the night before.

They then went out to another outrageously expensive restaurant for a fine dinner and wine, although Crowley cut Aziraphale off after two glasses. As they walked back to the hotel, the beautiful blue Danube waltzing along beside them***, Aziraphale turned to Crowley. “Thank you, Crowley. This was a perfect day. Absolutely perfect.”

Crowley thought so too, but he just said, “Anytime, angel.”

* * *

*By this time, the tea that Aziraphale had left in the bookshop was a rich and productive ecosystem, containing hundreds of species of fungi, bacteria, and archaea, several of which are unknown to science. It was like a miniature tropical rainforest in terms of its biodiversity and complex interspecies relationships. Thousands of generations of microevolution had resulted in a web of life delicately attuned to the damp and aromatic environment of the teacup.

**Crowley was always a very successful haggler. He assumed that it was because of his finely honed skills, but it was actually because he made people vaguely uncomfortable and eager to end their interactions with him as quickly as possible. Had Crowley known that, he would have been even more pleased with himself.

***The Danube is the only river in the world that goes _da da da da da DUM DUM DUM DUM_.


	12. Chapter 12

Aziraphale and Crowley made an early start the next morning. Aziraphale still felt a happy glow from their enjoyable evening in Vienna. It was as if Crowley had finally relaxed and started to enjoy himself for the first time since the whole contract business. Aziraphale reflected that maybe coming on this quest had not been such a bad idea after all. He still had his doubts that they would find Eden or God, but maybe all they had needed to find was a city to explore together. Being somewhere different had the effect of shaking them out of their old arguments and worries. Maybe, Aziraphale thought, they could just keep going. They could drive down to Africa, or over to Asia. The road wasn’t endless, but it was long. Heaven or Hell would be bound to catch up with them eventually, or else Crowley would finally disincorporate them both with his reckless driving, but until then the road lay open before them. However many days he had left, Aziraphale would be perfectly content to spend them in the Bentley, hurtling down the motorway like a comet, skipping from one exotic city to another, Queen on the radio, Crowley at his side.

Crowley, however, seemed to have other ideas. He was driving once again with a mission, with a destination. After they crossed Hungary, they exited the Schengen Area and had to stop at border control points at each new country*. They spent the whole day zooming through balkanized nations and fallen empires, on the warpath of the Crusaders, through Serbia, then Bulgaria. As they went, the motorways got progressively rougher, the cars older, and the buildings blockier. Finally, as Europe petered out on them, they crossed the border into Turkey.

Crowley wanted to keep going, but Aziraphale pointed out that they didn’t know which way to go from there, and it was getting late. So they stopped for the night in Istanbul. “I haven’t been here since it was Constantinople,” Aziraphale mused. He opened _Lonely Planet Europe_. “Watch the whirling dervishes,” Aziraphale read aloud. “That’s all it says. A bit cryptic, wouldn’t you say?”

Crowley grunted in agreement. He had been quiet and moody the whole day. They checked into a hotel and went out for dinner. At the restaurant, Crowley spread out maps across the table and stared at them. The Anatolian Peninsula, the Arabian Peninsula, the Caucasus. “Where was it?” Crowley asked. “Do you remember?”

“No. Things were very different back then.” Aziraphale looked at the maps.

“I know it must be somewhere in here.” Crowley outlined a roughly cross-shaped area of land bounded by the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea, the Persian Gulf, and the Red Sea. “This is where it all started, where the world began. But after we cross the Bosporus tomorrow, we’ll have to eventually turn south if we’re going to Iraq, or stay north for Armenia, or keep going east to Iran. Which way should we go?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, think. You’re clever about this sort of thing.”

“I am thinking.” Aziraphale was thinking about how much he would like to have some Turkish delights for dessert. “We’ll find it. Eventually.” Despite his assurances, Aziraphale could see that it was slowly dawning on Crowley what a fool’s errand this quest of his was. But Aziraphale was far too kind to say _I told you so_.

On the way back to the hotel, Aziraphale saw a shop selling Turkish delights and went in to a buy a bag of the sweets. When he came back out, Crowley was standing on the edge of a little plaza, watching a group of white-clad men spinning in rapid repetitive circles, their garments sweeping out around them. “Whirling dervishes,” Crowley said. “The guidebook said to watch them.”

“All right,” Aziraphale said. He took a bite of one of the Turkish delights and offered the bag to Crowley, who waved it away impatiently.

“Why do they do that?” Crowley asked, equally fascinated and confused by the dancers.

“It was started in the twelfth century by the Sufi mystic Rumi,” Aziraphale said through a mouthful of sugared dates. “The goal is to abandon one’s ego and become one with God. The left arm is held towards the Earth, while the right is extended to receive God’s beneficence. The dervish whirls from right to left around the heart, embracing all humanity with love.” Licking powered sugar from his fingers, Aziraphale added, “Now they mostly do it for tourists.”**

“The right arm is extended towards God?” Crowley asked.

“That’s right.”

“So God is … that way.” Crowley pointed in the direction in which all the dancers had their arms extended.

“That seems a bit thin,” Aziraphale said skeptically.

“Do you have any better ideas?”

Aziraphale did not. After a bit of reckoning, they determined that the direction the dervishes had been pointing was almost due east. Following that direction would take them towards Armenia, so Crowley announced that Armenia was where they would go.

That night in the hotel, Crowley went to sleep as usual, but Aziraphale was restless and didn’t want to bother with sleep. He wandered down to the hotel lobby and found a small lending library. There on the shelf was a copy of Rumi’s _Masnavi_. Aziraphale took that as a sign and brought the book back to the room to read. He spent the whole night reading the poem. It was a rich tapestry of Sufi teachings, dialogue between characters, and quotes from the Qur’an, but also frequently went off on tangents that took hundreds of lines to make their point and sometimes failed to make a point at all.*** Aziraphale had met Rumi once, outside the madrassa in the city of Konya, where the master sat playing his reed flute. They had chatted about music and poetry and God, then Aziraphale had gone on his way. Now, reading, the lines of the _Masnavi_ , Aziraphale could hear them intoned in Rumi’s voice.

_I died to the mineral state and became a plant,_

_I died to the vegetal state and reached animality,_

_I died to the animal state and became a man,_

_Then what should I fear? I have never become less from dying._

_At the next charge I will die to human nature,_

_So that I may lift up head and wings among the angels,_

_And I must jump from the river of the angel,_

_Everything perishes except His Face,_

_Once again I will become sacrificed from the angel,_

_I will become that which cannot come into the imagination,_

_Then I will become non-existent; non-existence says to me like an organ,_

_Truly, to Him is our return._

Aziraphale put the book down. Old Rumi was wiser than he himself had ever been, in recognizing that even angels were ultimately mortal. To Rumi, that had been comforting. Time on Earth was limited, and eventually all beings became one with God. Rumi had made himself and his followers dizzy, whirling themselves in circles, trying to attain that oneness for even just a moment. But Rumi didn’t know God personally. Aziraphale did, or had at one time, and the thought of oneness with the Almighty was not all that appealing. Rumi had believed in a God of love, but as far as Aziraphale could tell, all the love was here on Earth. He looked over at Crowley’s sleeping face, then turned to the window to wait for the sun to rise over the Bosporus and, beyond that, maybe over Eden.

* * *

*They didn’t have passports, but Crowley was a very smooth talker and generous briber.

**Just like most other expressions of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity.

***Footnotes hadn’t been invented yet, otherwise old Rumi would have stuck a lot of those asides down where no one had to read them. That’s where those kinds of random thoughts belong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rumi lines are from the 1930 Nicholson translation of the Masnavi.


	13. Chapter 13

Crowley woke up in a bad mood. He had been eager to reach Turkey, as that meant they were almost to their destination, but now that they were in Turkey, it didn’t seem like they were any closer. Looking out the window of the hotel room, the twenty-first century still very much appeared to be going on outside. The possibility of Eden still existing, never mind God, suddenly seemed remote. All those mornings ago, when Crowley had slithered up to Aziraphale and started making idle workplace chitchat, they had had the world to themselves, other than a couple of very scared and naked humans. Now the place was so crowded. There couldn’t be mythical gardens or omnipotent deities hanging about, there just wasn’t room for them.

Still, they got into the Bentley and pointed it east. They drove from Europe to Asia on a bridge spanning the Bosporus, then continued across the sprawling Anatolian plateau. Every time Crowley wondered if they were going in the wrong direction, he accelerated faster, reasoning that at least they would get to the wrong place sooner. In between moments of terror when Crowley was especially aggressive in overtaking a lorry or navigating a curve, Aziraphale kept up a stream of idle chatter about the sights they were passing and the book of poetry he had been reading the night before. He didn’t seem at all concerned about where they were going. Crowley knew that Aziraphale still wasn’t fully on board with their mission and was only going along with it to humor him. Crowley hated being humored.

After driving all day at breakneck speeds, they saw a line of snowy mountains on the distant horizon, lit by soft alpenglow from the setting sun.

“That’s Armenia up ahead,” Crowley said. “Where do we go from here?” The whirling dervishes’ arms had not been pointing to any specific location in Armenia, as far as he could tell.

“I don’t –”

“Don’t tell me that you don’t know,” Crowley snapped. “I know you don’t know. I don’t know either. This is how the process works.”

After a moment, Aziraphale brightened. “I’ll check the guidebook.”

“ _Lonely Planet Europe_?”

“It’s been quite helpful so far. I especially liked the little café it recommended in Vienna –”

“We’re not looking for a bloody café in Vienna. We’re not even _in_ Europe anymore.”

“Well, it’s a magic book,” Aziraphale said, unperturbed.

“You know, not all the answers to life’s questions can be found in books –”

“Here we are,” Aziraphale interrupted. He had opened the guidebook. Reading aloud, he said, “ _Well, you’re asking me to stray a bit out of my comfort zone. I specialize in recommendations for budget-conscious independent travelers who like to get off the beaten track.* All right, good point, I suppose mythical sites from the Bible qualify as off the beaten track. The consensus among respected archaeologists and historians is that the location of the Garden of Eden is nowhere, as it never existed. However, among the fringe scholars who reject that consensus, the most popular opinion is that it’s in the Armenian Highlands, that scenic yet genocide-afflicted and heavily militarized border region just ahead of you. Just follow these directions. That nice car of yours is about to get a bit dusty, I’m afraid.”_

Following the directions, they exited the motorway, then turned onto a smaller road, then a smaller one, until eventually the Bentley was bouncing along a rough dirt track. It was indeed a bit dusty. At one point, Aziraphale yelped, “Goats!” Crowley slammed on the brakes just in time to avoid hitting a line of goats making their slow, ponderous way across the road. “Angora goats, those are,” Aziraphale commented. “Used for producing mohair.” They did have unusually long and lustrous coats. But they were still goats, which meant that they were disagreeable bastards.

“Come on,” Crowley said impatiently, letting the Bentley roll forward in a futile attempt to scare off an especially obstinate goat who had decided the middle of the road was a dandy place to stop and chew its cud. “All right, you lot have ten seconds to get out of the way, or it’s goat kebabs for dinner.”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said reproachfully. “That’s not how you deal with goats. They’re stubborn creatures, they don’t respond to threats.”

“What do they respond to?”

“Kindness,” Aziraphale said loftily. “Just like all God’s creatures.”

Crowley rolled his eyes. “Oh, come on – what are you doing?”

Aziraphale had grabbed his leftover Turkish delights and gotten out of the Bentley. He held out a candy to the obstinate goat, who immediately ate it out of his hand and followed him to the side of the road to see if he had any more. Sensing that there was a sucker in their midst, the other goats crowded round Aziraphale, clearing the road. Crowley eased the Bentley past the goats, the turned to see how Aziraphale was faring. The angel had apparently exhausted his supply of sweets, and the goats were nibbling on the sleeves and hem of his overcoat to see how it tasted. Crowley grinned and got out his phone to record a video.

While he was recording the goats’ assault on Aziraphale, Crowley noticed a human standing some distance away from the road with the rest of the goats. The human was bundled up from head to toe, so it was impossible to tell if they were adult or child, man or woman. Aziraphale noticed the human too and managed to wrench his sleeve out of a goat’s teeth long enough to give the goatherder a friendly little wave, clearly meant to convey _I mean your animals no harm, and I wish I could say the same about their intentions toward me_.** The human just stood there, watching.

When Aziraphale managed to extricate himself from the mob of goats, he threw himself back into the Bentley and ordered, “Drive!”

Crowley drove the Bentley on its bouncing way down the track. “How’s that kindness to all God’s creatures working out for you?”

“I should have known,” Aziraphale said, examining his sleeve ruefully. “Those creatures are on _your_ side.”

Crowley shrugged. “Well, the Boss does have a thing for goats, but that’s between him and his therapist.”

The sky grew darker and the track became increasingly indistinguishable from the surrounding dust and rocks. The slope of the land also became noticeably steeper as they entered the highlands. “Are we still going the right way?” Crowley asked for the twentieth time.

“According to the book, yes. Oh – now it’s saying we have to go that way.” Aziraphale pointed straight ahead, where the Bentley’s headlines illuminated a boulder-strewn slope that had collected rockfall debris from the cliffs above. “It, um, says we might want to walk from here.”

“Well, obviously I’m not going to drive my car into that. How stupid does it think we are?”

“Pretty stupid, it says.” Aziraphale closed the guidebook. “Crowley, it’s dark. Maybe we should spend the night here, keep going in the morning.”

“All right, fine.” Crowley rolled the Bentley to the side of what he considered to be the road and shut off the engine. “No 500-thread count Pima cotton sheets tonight.”

“It’s beautiful, though.” Aziraphale got out of the car and walked over to the edge of the boulder field.

Crowley followed. “It’s freezing,” he complained. He was wearing his perfectly tailored suit jacket, which looked very stylish but was useless when it came to insulation because insulation would have ruined its sleek fit.

“This mountain air is a bit brisk. But look.” The moon was full, shining off the white snowy mountains that now seemed near enough to touch. “That one is Mount Ararat,” Aziraphale said, pointing to the highest peak.

“Where the Ark ran ashore***. Good times.”

They stared at the mountains. Crowley tried to imagine the sea that had covered the ground they were standing on all the way up over the glacier-clad summits until just the peak of Mount Ararat was sticking out as an island.

Aziraphale was clearly thinking similar thoughts. “Are you at all concerned that the being we’re trying to find is someone known for flooding the entire world when She gets in a wrathful mood?”

“Nah. She’s calmed down quite a bit since then. But, well, if it starts raining, we’re getting out of here.”

“No need to worry about that. According to the rainbow covenant, the Almighty won’t drown everyone again, remember?”

“Right. It’ll be fire next time.”

They stood there for a few more minutes, contemplating the view. Then Aziraphale said cheerfully, “Well, speaking of fire. How about I start one to keep us warm?”

“There’s no way you know how to do that. But I’m happy to watch you try.”

So Crowley sat on a boulder while Aziraphale laboriously gathered fuel. The pickings were slim, because there were no trees growing on the rocky plain, but Aziraphale did manage to find some ragged-looking shrubs that he harvested branches from. He carefully arranged some stones into a circle and stacked the branches into a small sad-looking pile. Looking pleased with himself, he said, “And now just something to light it with.” Then he frowned. “What do you light it with? You can do that with some sort of rock, can’t you?” He picked up two rocks and started banging them helplessly together.

“Humans figured all that out right away,” Crowley said. “The banging of the rocks and the lighting of fires.”

“Only because I gave them that flaming sword. Are you going to help or not? Isn’t fire more within your area of expertise?”

“Fine,” Crowley said. He gave in only because he was quite cold now. Otherwise, he would have gone for the entertainment of watching Aziraphale fail to light a fire all night long. “The Bentley has a cigarette lighter.”

“How does it work?” Aziraphale was already starting toward the Bentley.

Crowley jumped up to head him off. “I’ll handle all flames in my car, thank you. It’s already been burned up once.”

In the Bentley, Crowley looked around for something to light on fire. _Lonely Planet Europe_ was lying on the passenger seat. Crowley eyed it speculatively, and the book’s pages fluttered in fear. “All right, all right,” Crowley muttered. He instead used the now-empty paper bag Aziraphale had gotten from the sweet shop in Istanbul. He lit the bag with the car’s built-in cigarette lighter, then dashed like an Olympic torchbearer to drop the burning paper bag into the fire ring Aziraphale had made. Surprisingly, the fire immediately swelled up to a respectable size. The shrubs apparently contained some sort of resin that made them highly inflammable.

“We did it!” Aziraphale said in excitement.

“It won’t last long. Those branches will burn through quickly.”

Aziraphale and Crowley both sat on boulders next to the fire, trying to soak in the heat while it lasted. “Crowley,” Aziraphale said eventually, “I just want to say that, no matter what happens, this quest has been worth it.”

“No, it hasn’t. It won’t be until we get done what we came here to do. Up till now it’s just been a lot of driving around.”

“It’s been the most fun I’ve had since, well, it’s the most fun I’ve ever had. We should have done this years ago.”

“What, gone on a mission to find God?”

“No, just – this. Gone on holiday together.”

“We’ve been all sorts of places together.”

“On orders. When we were working, or pretending to work, or trying to thwart each other. I just wish I had defected from Heaven much sooner. Should have done it as soon as the Almighty threw Adam and Eve out of the Garden just for having knowledge. I wish we hadn’t spent six thousand years on opposite sides.”

Crowley shook his head. “Well, we’ve got the next six thousand.”

“Crowley.” Aziraphale said his name with so much affection it was almost painful. “You know they’re going to get us. I don’t know when, but there’s no way it will take them six thousand years.”

“That’s why we’re here.” Crowley poked at the fire, suddenly furious. “Do you understand? We’re not here on a lark. We have to get you out of your contract and Heaven and Hell off our backs, because otherwise we don’t have a future. So I need you to believe that we can do it, or at least act like you do.”

“All right.” Aziraphale’s voice was soft. “We can do it. Of course, we can.”

They kept silent until the fire burned down to embers, then Crowley said, “I’m going to bed,” and stalked back off to the Bentley. He got in the backseat where he could lie down, wishing he had brought a warmer coat, since there was no one to be stylish in front of other than angora goats, anyway.

He fell asleep quickly, but something woke him while it was still dark. “Aziraphale?” Crowley said, still only half-awake.

“Yes, my dear?” Aziraphale said through chattering teeth from the Bentley’s front seat.

Crowley sat up, and Aziraphale’s overcoat fell off him. The angel must have covered him with it while he slept. “Oh, for – somebody’s sake,” Crowley said wearily. “Just get back here already.”

“Is there, um, room for both of us? I don’t want to be in the way –”

“I said get back here.”

Aziraphale scrambled into the backseat, and Crowley wedged himself up against him, covering them both with the overcoat. Aziraphale made for a decent pillow, so Crowley laid his face against the angel’s chest. “I’m just going to move my arm if that’s all right –” Aziraphale said hesitantly.

“Fine, move your arm wherever you want,” Crowley said, already on the verge of sleep again. He felt Aziraphale’s arm go around his shoulders. Feeling warm and content, Crowley drifted off to sleep.

* * *

*Unfortunately, as soon a destination is featured in a guidebook, the track leading to it gets beaten by budget-conscious independent travelers, and then it’s squarely on the beaten track.

**Gestures are underrated as a form of communication. A friendly little wave, when executed skillfully, can convey abstract concepts and grammatically correct syntax.

***Every so often some fringe archaeologist finds a bit of wood on Mount Ararat and excitedly announces that they’ve found the remnants of Noah’s Ark. They are wrong. The real Ark sank with the receding floodwaters down the valley floor, where the local villagers used it as a source of firewood for years. Originally, they had planned to use some of the wood for building materials, but they quickly abandoned that plan because there was just no getting the smell out.


	14. Chapter 14

Crowley woke when the dawn started to break. His face was still smooshed into Aziraphale’s chest, and the angel’s arm was still around him. Crowley looked up and saw that Aziraphale had fallen asleep too, and without even being drunk. Crowley decided not to move just yet. He didn’t want to wake Aziraphale, and besides, he was warm and comfortable and it felt better than he was willing to admit.

When the sun crested the mountains, its light slanted down into the Bentley, and Aziraphale stirred. “Good morning, my dear,” he said.

Crowley sat up straight and adjusted his jacket, wanting to dispel any notion that he had just been doing something as undemonlike as cuddling. “Morning. Sorry there’s no tea.”

“That’s all right.”

Crowley handed Aziraphale his overcoat, refusing to be embarrassed. “Well, we’d best be off.”

They stood outside the Bentley and looked at the slope they had been instructed to climb. It looked steeper in the honest light of day. “We’re meant to go up that slope,” Aziraphale said, consulting _Lonely Planet Europe_. “Then up some more. Then, just for a change, up again. You get the idea, it says.” He closed the guidebook and tucked it into the pocket of his overcoat.

“Up it is,” Crowley said grimly, and started up the slope. Aziraphale hurried along behind him.

It was rough going, as the steep slope was covered with loose rocks that had an infuriating tendency to slide down as soon as they were touched by a foot. Aziraphale huffed and puffed pathetically. “I don’t suppose there would be any harm in flying, would there?” he asked hopefully. “I mean, there’s no one around for miles.”

“You want to bet our lives on that?” Crowley narrowly avoided a very uncool faceplant as the rocks moved yet again beneath him. He really wasn’t doing much better than Aziraphale. Neither of them was used to going up mountains in this way.

Aziraphale sighed. “No, I suppose not.” He shut up for a while to concentrate on the ascent, and they started making some progress. Finally, they attained a ridgeline, which Aziraphale said L _onely Planet Europe_ said they should follow.

“I don’t remember there being mountains around the Garden,” Aziraphale said, taking a moment to survey the desolate landscape now that the going was a bit easier.

“There probably weren’t. I don’t think mountains had been invented yet. Or deserts, or any sort of barren wasteland like that. She made them special, just so the humans would have miserable places to go suffer their miserable lives and die their miserable deaths in.”

“Maybe not _just_ for that,” Aziraphale said. “Maybe places like this are meant to remind humans of the Almighty’s power. I mean, look at it.” He swept a hand around to encompass the tall spires of rock ahead on the ridgecrest, the gracefully white curves of the higher peaks above, and the rocky plains stretching away to the west. “It’s sublime.”

“Bunch of rocks and snow,” Crowley said dismissively. “I don’t see what so beautiful about that.”

“Beauty and sublimity are different concepts. Edmund Burke argued that they’re mutually exclusive. Kant said that beauty is connected to the form of an object that has boundaries, while the sublime is found in a formless object, one characterized by boundlessness. Schopenhauer developed a taxonomy of beauty and sublimity, in which feelings of the sublime are evoked by an overpowering or vast malignant object of great magnitude, one with the power to destroy –"

“Please, no Schopenhauer. I can’t cope with Schopenhauer right now.”*

“Well, you get the idea. The point is, the Garden was beautiful. It had bounds, it provided for all the humans’ needs, and there was nothing there could harm them. Other than the snake in the grass, of course.” Crowley rolled his eyes even though he was in front of Aziraphale and the angel couldn’t see him. “But then,” Aziraphale went on, “the wilderness they were cast out into was sublime. It was boundless, and they had to fight for every scrap, and everything from the weather to the animals was trying to kill them. But it wasn’t like that just to punish them. It was so they would remember and believe.”

“All right, fine. It’s sublime. Just don’t start quoting the Romantic poets at me.”

They trudged along all morning. The ridgecrest widened somewhat while the drop-off on either side dropped off to ever greater depths. As the sun approached its zenith, they approached a summit of some sort. Crowley was looking forward to reaching it, because it stood to reason that once they had gone as far up as was physically possible, there must be some down to follow. He’d always preferred to do his sauntering in the downward direction.

With his head bent toward the ground so that he could see the loose rocks and thereby minimize the amount of tripping over them he would be likely to do, Crowley saw a shadow flicker by the sun. Probably a hawk or something. He didn’t have the energy to spare to look up. But Aziraphale stopped short behind him and said abruptly, “Oh, fuck.”

Aziraphale only swore when the occasion really and truly deserved it. So Crowley knew that they were in serious trouble before he even turned his face upward and saw what it was flying the skies above them. Angels. Probably a dozen of them, flying in formation like fighter jets. They only did that when they meant business. The angels started descending in a strategic pattern, hemming Aziraphale and Crowley in like flies on a spiderweb. There was nowhere to go.

Crowley turned to look at Aziraphale. He would have expected panic, but Aziraphale was calm. As if he had been expecting this. “Crowley, it was worth it,” Aziraphale said. “It was all worth it.”

Crowley didn’t have anything to say. Not one blasted thing. All the words were stuck in his throat.

Aziraphale smiled, sad but brave, and added, “You should run. It’s me they’re after.”

And Crowley found some words after all. “Shut up, you idiot.”

Aziraphale got the message. “I love you too, my dear.”

Angels were landing on the ridgeline all around them. Big burly angels with folded arms and scowls and swords pointedly displayed in scabbards at their sides. These were not the angels they put on Christmas cards.**

A smug-looking angel landed right in front of Aziraphale. Crowley recognized him as Gabriel. “Aziraphale, you traitorous demon-loving scum,” Gabriel said cheerfully.

“Gabriel,” Aziraphale said, his voice as neutral as if they had just run into each other in the office hallway. “How did you find us?”

“We have agents everywhere. Including goatherders who notice when a 1926 Bentley drives through their herd.”***

_Dammit_ , Crowley thought. He should have listened to Pulsifer about the Bentley. No, scratch that, he should have listened to Aziraphale about just staying in Tadfield in the first place. This was all his fault. Crowley was used to things being his fault, but this was the first time he had been so bothered by it.

“What is it, exactly, that he’s done?” Crowley found himself asking. “Why can’t you just –"

“We don’t deign to speak to demons,” Gabriel said, cutting him off. “We’ve alerted Hell to your location. You’re their problem.” He turned back to Aziraphale. “And you, Aziraphale, are ours.”

Aziraphale stood, head held high, and looked Gabriel right in the eye. “I’m glad I’ve made things difficult for you.”

“Well, things are about to get more difficult for you. You’ll be begging for hellfire by the end.” Gabriel smirked at Aziraphale. Crowley remembered that smirk. It was the same one Gabriel had smirked at Aziraphale, who was actually Crowley, when he said _Shut up and die_ before forcing him into the hellfire. Crowley had wanted to hit that smirking face back then, and now he really, really wanted to hit that smirking face. He took a step toward Gabriel, but two of the burly angels grabbed his arms and pinned them back.

“You won’t win in the end,” Aziraphale said calmly to Gabriel. “And you know it. That’s why you’ve gotten so unhinged, because you know you don’t have any real power in this world anymore –”

With a single movement, Gabriel grabbed the sword from the sheath at his hip, brandished it, and stuck it right into Aziraphale’s chest. From the angle he was standing at, Crowley could see the point of the sword emerge from Aziraphale’s back. He had been run through.

Crowley didn’t move, or cry out, or do anything. He couldn’t. All he could do was watch numbly as Gabriel pulled out the sword with a vicious relish and wiped the blood off on Aziraphale’s overcoat. Aziraphale’s knees crumpled, and he landed on his back.

“See you in Heaven,” Gabriel said menacingly. Then he and the other angels took off, leaving Aziraphale and Crowley alone on the sublime mountaintop.

Belatedly, Crowley’s own knees crumpled, and he had to crawl the few feet over to where Aziraphale lay. “Aziraphale,” Crowley said. He put his hands on the sides of the angel’s face. Aziraphale was alive, barely, but not for long. That sword had been forged in Heaven, and Crowley could feel the afterimage of Heaven’s power coursing through Aziraphale. It was a lethal wound for any mortal incorporation. No magic could heal it.

Aziraphale opened his mouth, forming it into the shape of Crowley’s name, but all that came out was a spurt of dark blood.

Time seemed to have slowed to a crawl, but Crowley’s mind had shifted to a higher gear and was moving faster. Gabriel had just disincorporated Aziraphale in the most painful way possible, and then once Aziraphale showed up in Heaven, they would continue doing the most painful possible things to him, until eventually they would destroy him with hellfire. That was Aziraphale’s future. Crowley could see it playing out in technicolor, surround sound, 3D.

No, Crowley resolved. They weren’t taking his angel. And all at once, he saw the alternative. It wasn’t great either, but at least this way Aziraphale might survive, at least some part of him. Maybe, this way, they could even find a way to be together. Crowley reluctantly conceded that maybe it had been a good thing that Aziraphale had signed that damn contract after all.

But this next part was going to be hard. He was going to have to leave Aziraphale to die alone, and that was the last thing he wanted to do. And he had to leave _now_ , because he could see that each breath might be Aziraphale’s last. So there was no time to explain what he was doing, but Aziraphale was clever. He would understand.

But Crowley had to say _something_. What he said was, “I have to go. I have to get there first. But I’m not leaving you alone there. Not ever.”

With a painful wrench, Crowley removed his hands from Aziraphale’s face and stood up. He didn’t dare look back. Instead, he spared a moment to take a quick look over the edge of the cliff, seeing a sheer drop of a thousand feet or more. Yeah, that should do it. He moved back a few steps, feeling that a running start would be helpful in both ensuring that he cleared the cliff edge and in giving his body less of an opportunity to disobey the insane order his mind was giving it. With that running leap, Crowley was airborne.

His mind had to firmly insist to his body that, no, orders were that wings should stay tightly folded away, despite the air whooshing through his ears and the rapid approach of very hard-looking and rocky ground. All in all, though, it was easier than it had been the first time. This time, it didn’t feel so much like falling. It felt like flying.

* * *

*In Schopenhauer’s defense, he also developed a theory of the ludicrous, so he was probably more fun to talk to at parties than you would think.

**The angels they put on Christmas cards are the ones who work in Heaven’s sprawling Public Relations department.

***Technically, a group of goats is called a trip. But this is no time to be pedantic.


	15. Chapter 15

Aziraphale had never enjoyed being disincorporated, but this one was going straight to the top of his list of worst disincorporations of all time. For one, having a sword stuck through your chest was every bit as painful as it looks. Moreover, this time he was going out with the full knowledge that what awaited him in Heaven was not a long queue at Corporeal Services to fill out the reams of paperwork needed for new body requests, as if that weren’t bad enough. No, this time all he had to look forward to was torture, supercilious insults from Gabriel, and eventually death by hellfire.

And then there was Crowley. It was bad enough being painfully disincorporated, but having Crowley there to watch made it ten times worse. As soon as Aziraphale felt the shocking impact of Gabriel’s sword, his eyes went automatically to Crowley. Crowley’s face was blank in a way that Aziraphale had never seen before. It was the look of someone who had given up, because he no longer had anything left to fight for or any strength to fight with. Then Aziraphale couldn’t support himself anymore, and he found himself on his back, looking at the clear blue sky. He could almost see Heaven up there. It felt like it was taunting him.

After the angelic strike force had departed, Crowley’s face entered Aziraphale’s field of vision. He placed both his hands on Aziraphale’s face, saying his name. Aziraphale tried to say Crowley’s name back. It was the only thing he wanted to say. But his throat was filling with blood. He was drowning in it. Something changed in Crowley’s face. There was pain and despair, but also a glint of scheming. Maybe he wasn’t giving up after all.

Crowley said something that Aziraphale could just barely hear but couldn’t make sense of, because the world was rapidly fading out. Then Crowley was gone. Aziraphale closed his eyes. Now that Crowley was gone, there was nothing he wanted to look at. All there was above him was the mocking blue light of Heaven, so bright and so cruel.

And then that was it. His body was gone, replaced by the familiar yet always discomfiting feeling of incorporeality. Aziraphale kept his eyes closed. Technically, he didn’t have eyes anymore, but he still kept them closed. He didn’t want to see Heaven, or Gabriel’s smug face. He would rather stay in the darkness.

A thought suddenly occurred to him. Now that his stabbed body and the attendant pain were gone, he had the ability to think again. He remembered that last look he had seen on Crowley’s face. It was a look of determination. That meant that Crowley had found a way to save him, or at least thought that he had. That was the only thing that would have made Crowley leave him. Because Crowley had said he would never leave him, hadn’t he? That was the last thing Crowley had said to him. And Aziraphale believed him.

And all at once, Aziraphale realized what Crowley had done. The contract. He had said that he had to get there first. He had disincorporated himself so that the contract would take effect and Aziraphale would be one of the Fallen in Hell instead of Gabriel’s punching bag in Heaven. Crowley had saved him, inasmuch as he could be saved. And Crowley himself would be issued with his contractually obligated new body and allowed to return to Earth. Except he had said that he wouldn’t leave Aziraphale, which meant he was planning to stay in Hell. But Aziraphale couldn’t allow that. As angry as Heaven was with him, Hell was at least as angry at Crowley. Aziraphale didn’t know what lay in store for him in Hell, but his first priority had to be to find Crowley and force him to return to Earth where he would be safe. 

It was strange, though. Crowley had said Falling hurt, but Aziraphale hadn’t felt any pain since being separated from his body. A terrible thought struck him. Maybe he had died before Crowley had had a chance to fling himself off a cliff or whatever he had been doing. That would be the worst outcome. Aziraphale would end up back in Heaven, and Crowley would have disincorporated himself and ended up in Hell for no reason. Panicked, Aziraphale reached out with his senses, trying to figure out where he was, if indeed he was anywhere.

What he felt surprised him. He felt that he had a hand, and that there was another hand gripping his. Now that he was aware of it, the grip was painfully tight, as if the owner of the other hand was extremely determined not to let go. “Crowley?” Aziraphale said, surprising himself with the sound of his own voice. He hadn’t realized he still had a voice to speak with. And if he had hands, and a voice, that must mean he had a body. So he opened the eyes that he now realized he still had.

He saw Crowley’s face, very near to his. The two of them were lying on the ground, facing each other, hands gripped together. Crowley’s eyes also opened, and he said, in just as much surprise, “Aziraphale?”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale repeated. He could feel Crowley’s hand in his, solid and corporeal. Somehow, they had both managed to hang onto their bodies.

Crowley suddenly lunged upward to his knees and pulled back the folds of Aziraphale’s overcoat. Aziraphale could feel the warm mess of blood that had soaked into his clothing. “I’m all right, my dear,” he said. He really was. Even though the blood was still there, the wound was just a memory. But Crowley seemed to need to see it for himself, so Aziraphale allowed him to unbutton his shirt and trace his fingers over the unbroken skin where Gabriel’s sword had gone in.

“Wings,” Crowley said suddenly.

“What?”

Crowley grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him up to a sitting position. “Your wings, angel. Let me see them.”

Aziraphale extended his wings, and a look of pure relief came across Crowley’s face. He reached over to gently straighten out a feather, which Aziraphale could see was still white. “Thank – thank somebody,” Crowley said. He leaned his forehead against Aziraphale’s shoulder. He was shaking. Not knowing what else to do, Aziraphale tentatively encircled his arms around Crowley. In response, Crowley immediately wrapped his arms around Aziraphale’s back, hands pressed against the base of his wings.

In the six millennia of their relationship, the two of them had exchanged many handshakes, back-slaps, arm-grabs, shoulder-pats, and one piggyback ride.* But this was the first time they had shared what could only be described as a hug. Normally, Crowley was far too cool for that sort of thing. But he seemed to have completely lost his cool for the moment, burying his face in Aziraphale’s neck and threading his fingers through his feathers.

As he held Crowley, Aziraphale looked around for the first time to take in their surroundings. They were outside, in an overgrown thicket of vegetation, grasses growing tall around them with a sun-dappled tree canopy overhead. “Crowley,” Aziraphale said. “Look at where we are.”

Crowley lifted his face and pulled back, though he kept a grip on Aziraphale’s shoulders. “Not Hell,” he said.

“Or Heaven,” Aziraphale added. He stood up, helping Crowley to his feet as well. Turning around, Aziraphale saw a familiar, although very dilapidated, gate. “Oh,” he said in surprise. “I suppose we found the Garden.”

Crowley whirled around and saw the Eastern gate. “Huh,” he said, glancing around at the jungle-like tangle of vegetation that surrounded them. “Could do with a bit of weeding.”

Aziraphale reached into his pocket and pulled out _Lonely Planet Europe_. Opening it, he read loud, “ _Garden of Eden. Worth a quick look if you’re in the area, but this historic attraction is in a sad state of disrepair. Also, there is no public transportation access and the neighborhood is a bit dodgy. Open seasonally, admission charged._ ” He closed the book and returned it to his pocket. “How did we get here?” Aziraphale asked, bewildered. “I mean, I was disincorporated. I’m sure of it. That sword went right through my chest like a knife through warm butter –”

“Yes, I was there,” Crowley snapped. “No need for the vivid description.”

“Sorry, my dear.” Aziraphale patted Crowley’s shoulder. “And you. You jumped off a cliff, didn’t you?”

“Might have done.”

“Oh, Crowley.”

“Look, I wasn’t going to let those bastards have you, all right? Anyway, looks like it was a pointless gesture. We didn’t end up in either Heaven or Hell, instead we ended up here, and there’s only one being who could have pulled that off. So the question is, what does She want with us?”

As if on cue, the bushes parted and a gray-haired woman walked through, wearing a simple white dress. She looked like someone’s grandmother, which She was. But not the plump grandmother who pinches your cheeks and bakes cakes. The other grandmother, the one who chain-smokes and talks about how naughty children used to be taught how to mind their manners via a good paddling.

“Aziraphale and Crowley,” She said, nodding to them. “Welcome back. It’s been a long time.”

“Almighty One,” Aziraphale said as he spread his wings wide and bowed deeply. He nudged Crowley, who dutifully extended his wings and bowed too.

“We’ve got some questions for You,” Crowley said without preamble. At Aziraphale’s glare, he added, “Almighty One.”

“You always did have so many questions,” the Almighty One said.

“Yeah, I know, that’s what got me into trouble.”

“Ask away. That’s why I brought you two here. You have questions for Me, and I have questions for you.”

“All right,” Crowley said uncertainly. He exchanged a glance with Aziraphale, who shrugged. “First things first,” Crowley plowed on recklessly. “The contract with Hell this idiot signed. You stopped that from going into effect, right? Because clearly the idea of _him_ as a demon is some sort of joke.”

“I did nothing regarding the contract,” God said. “As it happens, that contract was never valid. You can’t Fall for love.”

“But Lucifer –” Aziraphale piped up, then stopped himself, realizing that maybe bringing up Her estranged son was a bit tactless.

“Lucifer Fell because he was kind of a bastard,” God said shortly. Apparently, Lord Beelzebub had been right about that. “Next question?”

“Well,” Crowley said, having lost a bit of wind from his sails now that his righteous anger on Aziraphale’s behalf was unneeded, “that still doesn’t solve our problems. I mean, we’re still being hunted by Heaven and Hell, who want to do very unpleasant things to us, just because we disobeyed them. Because we wouldn’t let them destroy your creation, the world and humanity and all that.”

“Which You did a great job on, by the way,” Aziraphale interjected, wanting to smooth things over a bit. “It’s a very nice creation indeed.”

God eyed them like they were specimens under a microscope. “That’s not a question.”

“The question is,” Crowley said through audibly grit teeth, “is there any way You could persuade them to lay off? Stop them from painfully disincorporating and torturing and destroying us and let us just get on with our lives?” Aziraphale nudged him again, and Crowley rolled his eyes and added, “Please.”

God was silent for a moment. “Before I answer that, I need to ask you My questions first.” She sat down on a log, and Aziraphale and Crowley sat down too.

“You spoke of My creation,” God said. “Humanity. My children. How are they nowadays?”

“How _are_ they?” Crowley repeated.

“It’s just that, they never write, they never call, not unless they want something from Me. I know they’re busy with their own civilizations, but you would think they could spare a moment now and then for their poor old mother, who only wants what’s best for them.”

Crowley opened his mouth, clearly about to make a snide comment about the extent to which God had Her children’s best interests at heart, and Aziraphale realized he had better field that one himself. “They’re doing well, Almighty One,” Aziraphale said quickly. “Of course, they have their ups and downs. You know, there’s international tensions now and then, and this whole global warming thing is a bit worrisome, but on the whole, they’ve come a long way.”

God sniffed. “It’s the hardest thing in the world to be, a mother. When you’ve done your job right, your children don’t need you anymore.”

“They need You,” Aziraphale said. “They call You by many names, and some of them don’t even realize they need You, but they all do. Without You, they are lonely, and empty, and they spend their whole lives striving to fill that emptiness. They try to fill it in all sorts of ways, by composing symphonies, or climbing mountains, or entering trances, or solving mathematical equations, but no matter what they do, they are trying to find You. All the billions of beautiful things they have made, they have made for You, out of trying to become one with You.”

Crowley looked impressed by that little speech. Aziraphale was rather proud of it himself.

“And the terrible things they do?” God asked. “Many of those are done in My name as well.”

“Ah. That.” Aziraphale wished She hadn’t brought that up. That was a question that he never had figured out a good answer to.

“Half the time, they’re done in the name of Your followers,” Crowley said. “Or they’re done because someone from my side gave them the idea. That’s what we’re saying. While the boss is away, the middle managers have brought the company to the brink of destruction. Isn’t that what happens in any bureaucracy when it gets too big and unwieldy? It loses the function it was originally designed for and starts existing just to perpetuate itself. Heaven was designed to save human souls, and Hell to condemn them, but in the process the actual human souls have been forgotten about as it becomes about just taking out the competition. I mean, did You see what Heaven and Hell tried to do five years ago while You were off having Your midlife crisis here? That wasn’t the way You really intended this all to turn out, did you?”

“I didn’t intend anything.”

“Wait a minute.” Aziraphale felt that this was an important point. “What about the ineffable plan?”

“Fuck the ineffable plan,” God said. “Wouldn’t you say I look pretty effable?”

Aziraphale and Crowley both decided it was better not to answer that.

“There never was any ineffable plan,” God continued. “That was propaganda that My subordinates thought up to keep everyone in line. I’m just muddling My way through like everyone else. For My sake, I need a drink.” She waved a hand and a bottle of wine and three glasses appeared. She poured a glass for each of them. Aziraphale took a sip. It was decent wine but, to his disappointment, he’d had better.** He wondered if he should recommend some vintages to God, but decided that would be presumptuous.

“No ineffable plan,” Aziraphale said aloud. Crowley shot him a concerned look, but Aziraphale just shrugged. He’d stopped believing in the ineffable plan five years ago, and now it was a relief to not have to worry about it anymore.

“Nope,” God said, taking a healthy gulp of wine. “So you see why I’m wondering if I’ve done the right thing. I mean, I had you give the humans knowledge of good and evil –” she gestured at Crowley.

“You wanted him to make them eat the fruit?” Aziraphale asked, surprised.

“Of course. If I didn’t want them to eat the fruit, I wouldn’t have left it in the Garden where they could get at it, would I? I’m not an idiot.”

“But then You cursed them,” Aziraphale said. He was getting the feeling you get when you are on a bus, having a nice chat with a stranger, and it gradually dawns on you that the stranger is barking mad and you still have ten stops to go. “You sentenced Adam and all his sons to a lifetime of hard labor, and Eve and her daughters to the pain of childbirth, and You tossed them out of the Garden into the wilderness—"

“I had to,” God said. “I loved having them in the Garden, providing for all their needs while they were innocent. That was their infancy. But children have to grow up, and to do that they had to know about good and evil.” She looked at Aziraphale with mild reproach. “And then you went and gave them fire before they were ready. That’s like giving matches to a toddler.”

“Ha!” Crowley said triumphantly. At God’s quizzical look, he explained, “Just something I said to Aziraphale the first time we met, right here in the Garden. Remember that, angel? I said, wouldn’t it be funny if I did the good thing and you did the bad thing?” He laughed, and Aziraphale couldn’t help but join in. But their laughter died away at the blank look on God’s face. Apparently, She didn’t get the joke. Probably one of those things you had to be there for.

“Anyway,” God said, “it was only through knowledge of good and evil that they could have free will, to choose one or the other.”

“So why not just let them have their free will?” Crowley jumped back in. “Cut out the middleman, no Heaven, no Hell below them, above them only sky. That way, they can choose to be good or evil on their own without an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. And if they destroy the world themselves, that’s their own fault, but there’s no need to have them be pawns in this cosmic chess game.”

“That would mean there’s no need for you two either.” God put down her wine glass and leaned forward, just a bit. Aziraphale looked straight into Her eyes for the first time. What he saw was formless, boundless, with the power to destroy, like rock and ice stretching off into infinity. Old Schopenhauer had been right about the sublime.

“Er,” Crowley said. “That’s not what we were saying at all. We don’t interfere with the affairs of humans. We mostly just drink their wine and eat their food. And we saved them all from the Apocalypse a few years back, did I mention that? It’s those bastards in Heaven and Hell You want to get rid of. Almighty One,” he added.

“Hmm.” God leaned back again. “I don’t think humanity is ready to be on their own. Not yet. I’ve taken a more hands-off approach Myself since they invented science, but I still need someone minding the store. Heaven can be a bit heavy-handed, but they’ve got the necessary expertise, and Hell makes for an effective counterbalance. Always got to have balance.”

“So what about us?” Crowley asked, a bit pathetically.

God poured Herself another glass of wine. “Well, I confess to being fond of you two. You remind Me a bit of the humans. Nosy, meddling, and stupid.”

There was a pause. “Thank you, Almighty One,” Aziraphale said.

“I didn’t create angels to love anyone besides Me and humanity, and demons shouldn’t be able to love at all, and yet you do. That’s like the humans too. They started loving each other all on their own.” God swirled her wine glass thoughtfully. “You two understand humanity better than any of My other employees. Better than Me, that’s for sure. So I’ll leave you on Earth for now. Keep an eye on the humans, try to keep them out of trouble, and stay out of the way of Heaven and Hell’s operations.”

“We are honored to serve You, Almighty One,” Aziraphale said, “but the issue is, um, not so much us staying out of Heaven and Hell’s way as –”

“As the fact that we need them to stay out of ours,” Crowley said. “They want our heads on a platter, remember?”

God shrugged. “I wouldn’t worry about that. You’re not half as important as you think you are. They’ll get over it.”

“Ehhh,” Crowley said, expressing his skepticism. “Easy for You to say.”

“They’ll know you’re working directly for Me now. They’ll leave you alone.”

“Are you absolutely certain about that?” Crowley asked. “Could we get something in writing, or, or, an employee ID badge, or …” He trailed off as God fixed Her steely eyes on him. “Or Your Word is good, of course.”

“That’s settled, then.” God set down Her wine glass and stood up. “Anything else?”

“Just one thing,” Crowley said. “You might cheer up if You do a bit of work around the Garden. Weeding can be very therapeutic. And if You want these plants to grow better, You can try shouting at them. That’s what I do with mine, I put the fear of You into them, and You should see how green and lush they are. Except,” a look of concern crossed his face, “no one’s watered them for a couple weeks so they’re probably all dead now.*** Anyway, You might want to try the shouting thing. You’ll be even better at putting the fear of You into them than I am, seeing that You’re You, and I know from the old days that no one does wrath as well as You do –”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale whispered, trying to stop the words that were barreling along like a train with malfunctioning brakes.

But God just looked thoughtful. “Shout at them? I can do that. Haven’t had a good shout for a while.” Then She said, “Well, make sure My grandson is behaving himself. And don’t come bothering Me again,” and snapped her fingers. Aziraphale and Crowley found themselves standing once again on the lonely mountaintop.

* * *

*Alcohol had been involved.

**What Aziraphale didn’t know was that this was because God wasn’t about to break out Her good stuff for those two.

***Actually, the plants had formed a Free Autonomous Republic. They were in the process of debating a constitution and electing a parliament.


	16. Chapter 16

“The least She could have done is drop us off at the car,” Crowley said, miffed. He kicked a stone off the cliff. They were standing by the pool of Aziraphale’s blood on the ground where he had been stabbed by Gabriel, and the sight of it was putting Crowley into a bad mood.

“Well, at least we can fly now,” Aziraphale pointed out. “No need to lay low anymore.”

Crowley brightened at that. “Good point.” He immediately waved a hand over the puddle of blood, and it vanished.

“Is that really necessary?” Aziraphale asked. “I mean, I know the Almighty said Heaven and Hell will leave us alone now, but that doesn’t mean we should start up with the miracles within ten seconds of returning –”

“It’s necessary. Hold still.” Crowley waved his hand over Aziraphale’s chest, and the blood disappeared from his shirt and overcoat.

“Thank you, my dear. This is my favorite coat.”

“Yes, I know.” Crowley peered over the edge of the cliff. “I think I can see the Bentley from here. Shall we?”

Aziraphale stretched out his wings, which glinted majestically in the sun. “Let’s go.”

For the second time that day, Crowley took a running leap off the cliff. This time, he had his wings out, and the feel of the mountain air through his feathers was invigorating. It was a nostalgic feeling, going on a proper flight in a Biblical landscape.

Aziraphale glided along beside him. Crowley realized that this was the first time they had ever flown together. Back in the old days, pre-Arrangement, they had occasionally engaged in aerial pursuit of each other, but they had never flow side-by-side like this. It seemed incredible that, over all the years, all the bottles of wine, all the meals, all the clandestine meetings, all the arguments and drunken escapades and rescues and jokes, this was one thing they had never shared. Aziraphale smiled beatifically at him, and Crowley grinned back. The mountainsides were baking in the afternoon sun, sending up lazy thermals. Aziraphale and Crowley took their time descending to the valley floor, riding the updrafts all the way.

When they arrived back at the Bentley, they unceremoniously got in and drove away. Crowley kept an eye out for the angora goats, hoping he would get a chance to run one down in vengeance against the goatherder who had turned them in, but there were no goats in sight. Soon they were back to the main motorway, heading west back to Europe, the Armenian highlands in the rearview mirror.

Night came on, but Crowley didn’t stop, nor did Aziraphale suggest it. There was an unspoken consensus between them that, now that the mission was over, so was the holiday. It was time to go home. They didn’t talk much until the sun came up.

“I can’t believe we got away with that,” Aziraphale finally said, breaking the silence.

Crowley was entitled to an _I told you so_ , but he didn’t feel like using it. The memory of Aziraphale’s overcoat stained with blood was too fresh in his mind. So he just said, “Yeah. We were lucky.”

“Do you think Heaven and Hell really will leave us alone now?”

Crowley shrugged. “We were disincorporated and didn’t show up Downstairs or Upstairs. They have to be at least as terrified of us now as they were when they thought we were immune to hellfire and holy water. Especially if God really does tell them that we’re working for Her now.”

“ _Are_ we working for Her now? I was a bit unclear on what exactly we were supposed to be doing.”

“What we’ve always done. Hang around on Earth and live among the humans. If She wants us to do anything more than that, She can give us more specific instructions.”

Aziraphale stared out the window at the passing countryside. “Look at them,” he said, waving at the billboards and high-rise apartment buildings of the small city they were passing. “They’re all on their own, with no ineffable plan to make all their suffering worth it. I wonder how they would feel if they knew?”

“They probably do know. I mean, it doesn't look like a planet with a high degree of confidence that everything is in control.” Crowley aggressively overtook a bus, leaving about two inches between the Bentley and a car in the other lane, then glanced at Aziraphale. “What about you? Are you all right with this no ineffable plan thing?”

“More than all right. I’d rather it just be us, on our own, trying to muddle through.”

“You’ve come a long way, angel.”

“Your bad influence, no doubt.”

They drove straight through for the approximately two days it took to return to London.* Along the way, they listened to foreign radio stations and got into arguments about Crowley’s driving. Aziraphale read aloud _Lonely Planet Europe_ ’s snarky commentary on the cities they were driving through at light speed, and Crowley tried to explain more of the functions of the Bentley to the bemused angel. Aziraphale insisted that he had gone 120 mph on the motorway between London and Tadfield when he had driven the Bentley, and Crowley laughed in his face and refused to believe him on the grounds that the Bentley was still intact.

It was a damp, foggy afternoon when they entered the belly of the beast that was London. Crowley drove straight to his flat, feeling he needed to check on his plants and rescue any that had survived their weeks of drought. To his amazement, the plants were doing fine.** He watered them, shouted at them just a bit for not growing more in his absence, and went back out to the Bentley, where Aziraphale was waiting. He then drove the angel back to his bookshop.

Crowley parked in his usual miraculously reserved spot in front of the shop and followed Aziraphale inside. When they entered the back room, a pungent organic smell greeted them.

“Blech,” Crowley said. “What is that?”

“Oh, I left a cup of tea out. In my favorite teacup, too. That’s been bothering me this whole time.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Crowley said gallantly. He was used to dealing with foul substances from all the times he’d had to pop Downstairs to the office. He grabbed the teacup, which now held a liquid as bright green as radioactive waste, and dumped it into a storm drain in the alley behind the shop.*** For good measure, he tossed the empty teacup into a rubbish bin on the sidewalk. He could have cleaned it with his demonic powers, but Crowley knew when his demonic powers had met their match.

When he went back into the bookshop, Aziraphale had lit incense to dispel the foul odor and was sitting at his desk writing something. “What are you doing?” Crowley asked.

“Sending a thank-you card to Newt and Anathema.”

“Of course, that’s your first priority upon returning from an epic quest to meet God.”

“Don’t worry,” Aziraphale said. His face was turned away, but Crowley could hear the smile in his voice. “I’m signing it from both of us.”

“Right, go around _thanking_ people on my behalf,” Crowley grumbled, because it was expected of him. “I’ve got a reputation to maintain, you know.”

When Aziraphale had finished his thank-you card, he sat down on the sofa next to Crowley. “Well, I’d best be off,” Crowley said.

“All right, my dear,” Aziraphale said.

Crowley continued sitting on the sofa. He didn’t feel like leaving. Even though he and Aziraphale had hardly been outside of each other’s presence for the past three weeks, and they should be tired of each other’s company by now, he didn’t want to go back to his empty flat. He could almost feel the Earth whirling on its lonely path through space, but this was one place that didn’t seem so forlorn. This place, with its musty old books, the lamps casting a warm glow against the dreary weather outside the window, the air choked with incense smoke, and Aziraphale at his side.

“Or you could stay,” Aziraphale said, observing Crowley’s disinclination to move. “Stay as long as you like. We never did make it to the Ritz that night.”

“Yeah, all right,” Crowley said, no further temptation needed. They had left _Lonely Planet Europe_ out in the Bentley, seeing as they had no use for its snide comments about London restaurants.† But if they had brought the book inside the shop, and if Crowley had opened it, he would have read something that he would have scoffed at, just like he scoffed at everything he secretly agreed with. He would have read _Welcome home_.

* * *

*On the bright side, now that Crowley could use his demonic powers, they had a much easier time making it through border crossings.

**They had been made hardy by Crowley’s years of torment. When they saw that their oppressor had returned, a silent but brutal civil war broke out, leading to the dissolution of their Free Autonomous Republic and a return to their Dark Ages.

***With that, the complex microbial ecosystem that had developed was forever lost to science. One of the undiscovered species within that teacup may have been a pathogen that would destroy humanity, or a new pharmaceutical that would save it. We’ll never know, because they were all washed down into the Thames during the next rainfall.

†They had been to them all and were therefore perfectly capable of making their own snide comments.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Apologies to the many countries that were insulted in this fic, all of which are very nice countries indeed.
> 
> This was my first Good Omens fic. It was probably fifteen years ago when I first read the book, and I've read it maybe half a dozen times since. Then, of course, my love was reinvigorated by the Amazon series. It's such a fun world to play in, I will definitely be writing more in this fandom.
> 
> Edit: Now with sequel!


End file.
